Annuals 



for each of my purchases, and re-make the soil, 

 and give them shade or sun, north or south aspect, 

 peat or clay, as the case may be. . . . There is 

 nothing like making things grow for putting you 

 in your place : and that is why the poor in London 

 and the other " gardens defiled " feed the hunger 

 which comes to them as they lose their sense of 

 orientation by growing geraniums and convolvulus 

 and daisies in pots on their window-sills, or if the 

 worst comes to the worst, mustard and cress in 

 little wooden boxes. That is why thousands and 

 thousands of children who have never seen green 

 fields, and clean trees, and the open sky, long for 

 flowers to remind them that all the world is not 

 hard and cruel and dull and grim : they long for 

 flowers to feed their dreams. . . . Green fields 

 and trees and sky, flowers and fruit, bring love 

 and pride into wretched lives : love in dreams, 

 pride in the knowledge that, in spite of misery and 

 sordid streets, and squalor, there is nothing more 

 lovely than the heart of man. . . . Lives in 

 which one faint youthful glimmer of romance makes 

 all the rest worth while, are fortified in their 

 sorrowful faith by these tokens that what little 

 gleam there was, was true, a spark of enduring 

 light. Flowers are poems to the inarticulate 

 millions to whom words have no music : and for 



12: 



