THE CHARM OF GARDENS 



diamonds, each dew-drop reflecting its tiny world. The 

 trees, the world, the garden still asleep, or half asleep, 

 until the sun throws off the counterpane of clouds and 

 springs into the skies. 



It is at that time, before the sun is awake, the trees 

 look strange as sleeping things look strange, with a. 

 counterfeit of death, so still are they. And in the Spring 

 when the orchard is a pale ghost before the sun is up, a 

 man would swear it had been covered up at night in 

 silver smoke, or gossamer, or fairy silk that the sun tears 

 into weeping shreds that drip and drip and give the 

 grass a bath. 



But of the effect of trees as a spiritual support no man 

 is at variance with another. That they give courage, 

 and help and hope, that the green sight of them is 

 good as being reminder that Heaven is kind, and that 

 the Winter is not always, no man doubts but, perhaps, 

 fears to voice, feeling his neighbour will call out at 

 him for a worshipper of Pan and of strange gods. But 

 to the garden dweller, or to him who must perforce make 

 his garden of one tree in a dusty court, and of one glass 

 of flowers on his desk, these things have voices, and they 

 are kindly voices, saying, " Despair not," and " Regard 

 me how I grow upright through the seasons," and also 

 " Give shade and shelter to all things and men equally as 

 I do, without distinction or difference, and if the grass 

 gives a couch, fair and embroidered with flowers, so do I 

 give a roof of infinite variety, and a shade from the sun, 

 and a shelter from the wind." And again, " If a man 

 know a tree to love it he will understand much of men, 

 and of birds, and beasts and of all living things. And of 

 greater things too, for in the branches is other fruit than 

 the fruit of the tree. Just as the rainbow is set in the 

 sky for a promise, so is fruit in a tree set there ; and the 

 leaves show how orderly is the Great Plan ; and the 



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