The Happy Garden 



" The flower has an inner meaning, hopes and 

 fears that inspire its brief existence, a scheme of 

 salvation for its species in the struggle for survival 

 that it has been slowly perfecting with some 

 insect's help through the ages. It is not a passive 

 thing to be admired by human eyes, nor does it 

 waste its sweetness on the desert air. It is a 

 sentient being, impelled to act intelligently through 

 the same strong desires that animate us, and 

 endowed with certain powers differing only in 

 degree, but not in kind, from those of the animal 

 creation." 



In their love affairs all flowers are perfectly 

 abandoned, and they glory in it. The bees come 

 chanting and the tenderest and most frail of them 

 swoon away. . . . Their shamelessness makes 

 their charm. Their flaunting colours are in cele- 

 bration of their nuptials, and all their defiance 

 makes for innocence. Prose has no measure that 

 is not too solemn for the brief brilliant life of the 

 flowers above ground : no doubt under the earth 

 their days are as unromantic as the humdrum 

 existence of the average human, and no one has 

 ever described in lyrics their hibernation or their 

 early struggles in the spring. Sermons might be 

 made of them, though, if they were, I doubt if 

 any flower in the world would ever show its head 



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