XIII 

 THE GARDENS OF THE DEAD 



IT is a beautiful custom that we put flowers on the 

 graves of our dead, and is more fraught with meaning 

 than many know, for it is as a symbol resurrection that 

 they are so placed, inasmuch as the flower that seems 

 to perish perishes only for a while but comes up again as 

 beautiful, and though it die into the soil it reappears all 

 fresh and lovely with no sign of the soil to mar its beauty. 

 But it is more beautiful to plant the graves of those we 

 love with flowers, as then we symbolise that they are alive 

 in our hearts and for ever flowering in our thoughts. 

 And the shadow of the church over them is but the 

 shadow of the wing of sleep. All our lives, said a French 

 King, we are learning how to die ; and when the time 

 comes we cannot help but think of that Garden of Sleep 

 where we must be placed along with other sleepers, there 

 to wait. 



In England it has long been a habit to plant the more 

 melancholy trees and shrubs in churchyards, as Yew trees, 

 Myrtle, Bay, and the evergreen Oak. In this way a 

 sense of gloom was intended, much at variance with the 

 Christian doctrine that proclaims a victory over death. 

 But instead of this effect of sombreness the presence of 

 these evergreens gives an extraordinary air of quiet peace, 

 of something perpetually alive though at rest. Often 

 and often I have taken my bread and cheese into a coun- 

 try churchyard, and have sat down on the grass and 



233 2Q 



