AN ISLAND GARDEN 8l 



" The Poppy's red effrontery, 

 Till autumn spoils its fleering quite with rain, 

 And portionless, a dry, brown, rattling crane 

 Protrudes." 



Papaver Rhoeas is the common wild scarlet Poppy 

 that both these writers describe. John Ruskin 

 says : " I have in my hand a small red Poppy 

 which I gathered on Whit Sunday in the palace 

 of the Caesars. It is an intensely simple, in- 

 tensely floral flower. All silk and flame, a scarlet 

 cup, perfect edged all round, seen among the wild 

 grass far away like a burning coal fallen from 

 Heaven's altars. You cannot have a more com- 

 plete, a more stainless type of flower absolute ; in- 

 side and outside, all flower. No sparing of color 

 anywhere, no outside coarsenesses, no interior 

 secrecies, open as the sunshine that creates it; 

 fine finished on both sides, down to the extremest 

 point of insertion on its narrow stalk, and robed 

 in the purple of the Caesars. . . . 



" Literally so. That Poppy scarlet, so far as 

 could be painted by mortal hand, for mortal king, 

 stays yet, against the sun and wind and rain, on 

 the walls of the house of Augustus, a hundred 

 yards from the spot where I gathered the weed 

 of its desolation. . . . The flower in my hand is 

 a poverty stricken Poppy, I was going to write, 

 poverty strengthened Poppy, I mean. On richer 

 ground it would have gushed into flaunting 

 breadth of untenable purple; flapped its incon- 

 sistent scarlet vaguely to the wind ; dropped the 

 pride of its petals over my hand in an hour after I 

 gathered it. But this little rough-bred thing . . . 



