Then I thought of that still garden at St. Mary’s chapel, at Westminster, where the great father of English poetry wrote his treatise on the “Astrolabe” for his little son Lewis. I imagined him with his wise and tender face, and far-off, deep-set grey eyes looking out on the world kindly, serious, gentle.
I liked to remember the great man’s peaceful deathbed, and thought of his last sweet verses—
“Flie fro the prese, and dwell with sothfastnesse;
Suffise unto thy Goode, though it be small,
For horde hath hate, and climbing tikelnesse.”
It is an old, old story, and yet always a new one; but in Chaucer’s time, failure met with a sharp ending.
I thought also of that fair garden near the Temple, which our greatest poet has touched with the divine intuition of genius, and made bloom with roses that no frost can kill, or smoke can soil. Where Plantagenet plucked the white rose of York, and Somerset the red one of Lancaster.
Then I thought of unfortunate Richard’s queen in the garden at Langley, and of the old faithful, rugged gardener and of his bitter cry of pity. “Here did she drop a tear. Here in this place I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace.”
Photo by Frith.