A Moonlight Garden 417 



silvery moonshine, with every radiant flower adoring 

 the moon with wide-open eyes, and pouring forth 

 incense at her altar. And it was peopled with shadowy 

 forms shaped of pearly mists and dews ; and white 

 night moths bore messages for them from flower to 

 flower — this garden then was the garden of my 

 dreams. 



Thoreau complained to himself that he had not 

 put duskiness enough into his words in his descrip- 

 tion of his evening walks. He longed to have the 

 peculiar and classic severity of his sentences, the 

 color of his style, tell his readers that his scene was 

 laid at night without saying so in exact words. I, 

 too, have not written as I wished, by moonlight; I 

 can tell of moonlight in the garden, but I desire 

 more; I want you to see and feel this moonlight 

 garden, as did Emily Dickinson her garden by 

 moonlight: — 



" And still within the summer's night 

 A something so transporting bright 

 I clap my hands to see." 



But perhaps I can no more gather it into words than 

 I can bottle up the moonlight itself. 



This lovely garden, varied in shape, and extending 

 in many and diverse directions and corners, bears as 

 its crown a magnificent double flower border over 

 seven hundred feet long; with a broad straight path 

 trimly edged with Box adown through its centre, and 

 with a flower border twelve feet wide on either side. 

 This was laid out and planted in 1833 by the parents 

 of Major Poore, after extended travel in England, 



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