Art Institute of Chicago.
This view of a public garden in Arles, as seen from Van Gogh’s Yellow House, has a wonderful wildness. Our gardens of today, soon to be in bloom, may be more organized but just as poetic in their way. For certain, we in the Berkshires are proud of our gardens, and there is a delight in the air when Spring weather invites the first turning of the soil and for poets, the traditional putting of pen to paper. Let’s step outside.
* * *
A garden starts with a piece of land and a gardener, more than likely you. But Mark Van Doren imagines a picturesque family figure.
The sun is warm and thick upon the path,
But he goes lightly, under a broad straw
None knows the age of. They are watching him
From upper windows as his slippered feet
Avoid the aster and nasturtium beds
Where he is not to meddle. His preserve
Is further, and no stranger touches it.
Yesterday he was planting larkspur there.
He works the ground then hoes the larkspur out,
Pressing the coreopsis gently in.
With an old hose he plays a quavering stream,
Then shuffles back with the tools and goes to supper.
Over his bowl of milk, wherein he breaks
Five brittle crackers, drifts the question: “Uncle,
What have you planted for the summer coming?”
“Why – hollyhocks,” he murmurs, and they smile.
* * *
Another poet who celebrated the planting of seed was Robert Frost, himself a practicing farmer. He wrote this sonnet at seed planting time.
You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.
* * *
Always interesting is the geography of a garden, how and where things are planted. In a poem called “Planning the Garden” Amy Lowell enthusiastically puts forth her ideas for a summer garden with its profusion of flowers.
Bring pencils, fine pointed,
For our writing must be infinitesimal;
And bring sheets of paper
To spread before us
Now draw the plan of our garden beds,
And outline the borders and the paths correctly.
We will scatter little words
Upon the paper,
Like seeds about to be planted;
These narrow lines
Are rose-drifted thrift,
Edging the paths.
And here I plant nodding columbines,
With tree-tall wisterias behind them,
Each stem umbrella’d in its purple fringe.
Winged sweet-peas shall flutter next to pansies
All down the sunny center.
These double paths dividing make an angle
For bushes,
Bleeding hearts, I think,
Their flowers jigging
Like little ladies,
Satined, hoop-skirted,
Ready for a ball.
These specks like dotted grain
Are coreopsis, bright as bandanas,
And ice-blue heliotrope with its sticky leaves,
And poppies! Poppies! Poppies!
Now plant me lilies-of-the-valley–
This pear-tree over them will keep them cool–
We’ll have a lot of them
With white bells jingling.
The steps
Shall be all soft with stone-crop;
And at the top
I’ll make an arch of roses,
Crimson,
Bee-enticing.
There, it is done;
Seal up the paper.
Let us go to bed and dream of flowers.
* * *
* * *
We spend many hours trying to keep our gardens free of weeds. But nature poet Gertrude Hall wonders if the lowly weed doesn’t deserve some place in the sun as well.
You bold thing! thrusting ‘neath the very nose
Of her fastidious majesty, the rose,
Ev’n in the best ordained garden-bed,
Unauthorized, your smiling little head!
The gardener,—mind,—will come in his big boots
And drag you up by your rebellious roots,
And cast you forth to shrivel in the sun,
Your daring quelled, your little weed’s life done.
You argue in your manner of a weed,
You did not make yourself grow from a seed,
You fancy you’ve a claim to standing-room,
You dream yourself a right to breathe and bloom.
The sun loves you, you think, just as the rose;
He never scorned you for a weed,—he knows,
The green-gold flies rest on you, and are glad,
It’s only cross old gardeners find you bad.
* * *
There are two poets whose gardens were as famous as their poems. Alexander Pope in the 18th century had a villa along the Thames River and a garden approached through a grotto. He pictured how a garden should be designed.
Fain would my Muse the flow’ry Treasures sing,
And humble glories of the youthful Spring;
Where opening Roses breathing sweets diffuse,
And soft Carnations show’r their balmy dews;
Where Lilies smile in virgin robes of white,
The thin Undress of superficial Light,
And vary’d Tulips show so dazzling gay,
Blushing in bright diversities of day.
Each painted flow’ret in the lake below
Surveys its beauties, whence its beauties grow;
And pale Narcissus on the bank, in vain
Transformed, gazes on himself again.
Here aged trees Cathedral Walks compose,
And mount the Hill in venerable rows:
There the green Infants in their beds are laid,
The Garden’s Hope, and its expected shade.
* * *
* * *
It has been said that Emily Dickinson in her lifetime was better known as a gardener than a poet. She wrote:
Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.
She said “I am very busy picking up stems and stamens as the hollyhocks leave their clothes around.” And she composed this about the perennial mayflower.
Pink, small and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,
Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.
Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity.
No surprise: the Mayflower is the state flower of Massachusetts.
* * *
* * *
It would seem that gardens and sonnets are frequently linked. Here Elizabeth Barrett Browning finds love in her garden.
Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers,
So, in the like name of that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts which here unfolded to
And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart’s ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet here’s eglantine,
Here’s ivy!— take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.
* * *
Some years ago I lived about a mile away from Edna St. Vincent Millay in Austerlitz, New York. Her landscaping was quite wonderful, and she wrote this poignant piece about autumn approaching her garden.
Oh, little rose tree, bloom!
Summer is nearly over.
The dahlias bleed, and the phlox is seed.
Nothing’s left of the clover.
And the path of the poppy no one knows.
I would blossom if I were a rose.
Summer, for all your guile,
Will brown in a week to Autumn,
And launched leaves throw a shadow below
Over the brook’s clear bottom, —
And the chariest bud the year can boast
Be brought to bloom by the chastening frost.
* * *
Perhaps like some of us, a lovely garden you grew up with is now only a memory. Julia Dorr, at one time the unofficial poet laureate of Vermont, fondly remembered just such a garden and imagined it as it appeared to her in the moonlight.
O my garden! lying whitely in the moonlight and the dew,
Far across the leagues of distance flies my heart to-night to you,
And I see your stately lilies in the tender radiance gleam
With a dim, mysterious splendor, like the angels of a dream!
I can see the trellised arbor, and the roses’ crimson glow,
And the lances of the larkspurs all glittering, row on row,
And the wilderness of hollyhocks, where brown bees seek their spoil,
And butterflies dance all day long, in glad and gay turmoil.
With a vague, half-startled wonder if some night in Paradise,
From the battlements of heaven I shall turn my longing eyes
All the dim resplendent spaces and the mazy star drifts through
To my garden lying whitely in the moonlight and the dew.
* * *
VIDEO. Now I hope you will indulge me as I offer what is to my mind the most beautiful song about gardens ever composed. It’s from the Broadway opera “Candide,” and the music is by Leonard Bernstein, words by Richard Wilbur based on Voltaire.
This performance took place at Tanglewood on the occasion of Bernstein’s 70th birthday in 1988. The soloists were Jerry Hadley and Dawn Upshaw. Seiji Ozawa conducted.
[CANDIDE]
You’ve been a fool and so have I
But come and be my wife
And let us try before we die
To make some sense of life
We’re neither pure nor wise nor good
We’ll do the best we know
We’ll build our house, and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow
[CUNEGONDE]
I thought the world was sugarcake
For so our master said
But now I’ll teach my hands to bake
Our loaf of daily bread
[CUNEGONDE & CANDIDE]
We’re neither pure nor wise nor good
We’ll do the best we know
We’ll build our house, and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow
[ALL]
Let dreamers dream what worlds they please
Those Edens can’t be found
The sweetest flowers, the fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground
We’re neither pure nor wise nor good
We’ll do the best we know
We’ll build our house, and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow
CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR VIDEO: MAKE OUR GARDEN GROW
