OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



they come back to me, giving a lilt to vindictive spud 



work. 



At another time, the apparent futility of all efforts to come 



even with the task at hand will evoke some such iterative lines 



as Cyrano's dying vision of eternally resurging enemies ' 



Je sais/bien qua/la fin/vous me/ 



mettrez/a has 



%.. N'impor/te, je/me bats/, je me/ 

 Sgr bats, je/me bats I 



This sort of absolutely 

 incongruous haunting is 

 an instance of what 

 Hoffmann would have 

 fondly called the Zusam- 

 meverhdngniss der Dinge 

 or " fatally-concatenated- 

 mutuaMnterdependency " 

 of things ! Mythological 

 images rising vaguely from the 

 clouds of school memories / the 

 lilt of that Walrus and Carpenter verse 

 parodied a thousand times / an American 

 jingle never recalled since it was first 

 casually read and dismissed on a railway journey / and 

 the magniloquent panache lines of Rostand all dropping 

 in irrelevantly from some distant and forgotten corner of 

 the past into this garden, all a propos of spud work and 

 linking itself with it! 



For instance, to-day <one of the three longest in the year, 

 for, in the coming morn, about five o'clock, our summer 

 180 



