Garden-Craft Old and New Part 16

"The conflict and the sounds that live in darkness,"

the wild rhetoric of the night upon some "haggard Egdon," or along the steep wild cliffs when the storm is up, and the deeps are troubled, and the earth throbs and throbs again with the violence of the waves that break and bellow in the caves beneath your feet; and then it perhaps shall cross your mind to set this brief moment of your despair against the unavailing pa.s.sion of tides that for ten thousand years and more have hurled themselves against this heedless sh.o.r.e. Or you shall find some sequestered corner of the land that keeps its scars of old-world turmoil, the symptoms of the hustle of primeval days, the shock of grim shapes, long ago put to sleep beneath a coverlet of sweet-scented turf; and the unspoiled grandeur of the scene will p.r.i.c.k and arouse your dulled senses, while its peaceful face will a.s.sure you that, as it was with the troubled masonry of the hills in the morning of the world, even so shall it be with you--time shall tranquillise and at length cancel all your woes. Or again,

"Should life be dull, and spirits low 'Twill soothe us in our sorrow That earth has something yet to show, The bonny holms of Yarrow."

Better tonic, one thinks, for the over-wrought brain than the soft glamour of the well-swept lawn, the clipt shrubs, the focussed beauty of dotted specimens, the ordered disorder of wriggling paths and sprawling flower-beds of strange device, the ransacked wardrobe of the gardener's stock of gay bedding-plants, or other of the permitted charms of a modern garden; better than these is the stir and enthusiasm of Nature's broad estate, the boulder-tossed moor, where the hare runs races in her mirth, and the lark has a special song for your ear; or the high transport of hours of indolence spent basking in the bed of purple heather, your nostrils filled with gladsome air and the scent of thyme, your eyes following the course of the milk-white clouds that ride with folded sails in the blue heavens overhead and cast flying shadows on the uplands, where nothing breaks the silence of the hills but the song in the air, the tinkle of the sheep-bells, and the murmur of the moorland bee.

And the upshot of the matter is this. The master-things for the enjoyment of life are: health, a balanced mind that will not churlishly refuse "G.o.d's plenty," an eye quick to discern the marvel of beautiful things, a heart in sympathy with man and beast. Possessing these we may defy Fortune--

"I care not, Fortune, what you me deny: You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace, You cannot shut the windows of the sky Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve: Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave; Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave."