It is hard to decide when the honeysuckle is at its best. Whether at hot noontide when the clusters of pale buff and white horns of plenty tipped with their long, feathery threads pour their incense into the golden sunlight, or when the less pungent, but equally intoxicating, perfume floats upon the silvery blue air of a moonlit night.
"How sweetly smells the Honeysuckle, in the hush'd night as if the world were one of utter peace and love and gentleness."
Landor has thus expressed what the delicious honeysuckle makes us feel.
"The monthly honeysuckle," writes Celia Thaxter, "is most divine. Such vigor of growth I have never seen in any other plant. It climbs the trellis on my piazza and spreads its superb clusters of flowers from time to time all summer. Each cluster is a triumph of beauty, flat in the center and curving out to the blossoming edge in joyous lines of loveliness, most like a wreath of heavenly trumpets breathing melodies of perfume to the air. Each trumpet of lustrous white deepens to a yellower tint in the center where the small ends meet; each blossom where it opens at the lips is tipped with fresh pink; each sends out a group of long stamens from its slender throat like rays of light; and the whole circle of radiant flowers has an effect of gladness and glory indescribable: the very sight of it lifts and refreshes the human heart. And for its odor, it is like the spirit of romance, sweet as youth's tender dreams. It is summer's very soul."
Enchanting season of fern and honeysuckle, perfumed stars that shine through green leaves and bells that send forth peals of incense instead of sound!
She show'd me her ferns and woodbine sprays
Fox-glove and jasmine stars,
A mist of blue in the beds, a blaze
Of red in the celadon jars,
And velvety bees in convolvulus beds
And roses of bountiful June—
Oh, who would think that the summer spells
Could die so soon?[60]
[60] Locker-Lampson.