(Breat^Cranbam's posp 



65 



Along with her rosemary, her rue and her mint, bitter herb 

 of the Pascal Feast, we shall find that our sweet old lady has 

 planted the nodding lavender, quaint and redolent of clothes 

 presses hospitably filled with generous Hnen. Flowers, it 

 would seem, are sometimes strangely like persons, and \y^-'''^''^\ 

 quite capable of rising, unlike a stream, above their sources 

 and being as it were superior to circumstance. Lavender is 

 surely one of these ; having been known in the long ago simply 

 as the laundry flower, lavender to us now means, equally 

 the blossoms themselves, the perfume and the colour which 

 have in turn received names from the nameless one. To 

 think of dahlias and rosemary and lavender is to be certain 

 that the flower borders of this quiet garden will be made of 

 peonies; and we shall wonder whether, after aU, with all their 

 varieties and hybrids today, we really love our peonies more 

 than grandam has hers, or whether these modem marvels, 

 better than their plainer ones, typify Olympian Apollo, the 

 first Paeon and the songs of health and victory which were 

 raised in his honour and name as physician extraordinary to 

 the gods. And just over there, beyond the healing peonies 

 come look with me, for 



" I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows 

 Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows," 



while all along the way we shall find the sweet heliotrope 

 which perhaps we credit as we do the sunflower, with a bit 

 more constancy than is its due. Here again we find flowers 



7 



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