274 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



speak lovingly also of the newer introductions. The 

 latest addition to the flora of the poets is the yucca, 

 and, as I have always grown this plant largely, I am 

 glad to see it so honoured. I wonder it has so long 

 remained unsung, for it was a very early introduction 

 from the New World, and was grown in England by 

 Gerard in 1597 ; yet, as far as I know, no poet has 

 noticed it before the late poet-laureate, and he has 

 done so in his latest work : 



' My Yucca which no winter quells, 



Although the months have scarce begun, 

 Has pushed towards our faintest sun 

 A spike of half -accomplished bells. ' 



To Ulysses. Demeter, p. 113. 



It is a well-known fact that nothing recalls the past 

 like scents, and this is so especially true of the scent of 

 flowers, that I suppose most of us can name instances 

 in our own experience. I never gather a leaf of the 

 fine-leaved form of the oak-leaf geranium without at 

 once going back in memory to a pleasant home in the 

 Midlands, where the genial host was so fond of the 

 leaf that it always formed a part of the * button-hole ' 

 of his guests. Elwanger, in The Garden's Story, carries 

 this too far when he says that the ' perfume of Lilium 

 auratum, stealing from the spotted petals, recalls the 



