OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 

 the windows, between the white curtains, along the stretched 

 string, the Campanula, surnamed Pyramidalis, works such 

 miracles, throws out sheaves and twists garlands formed of a 

 thousand uniform flowers so prodigiously immaculate and 

 transparent that they who see it for the first time, refusing to 

 believe their eyes, want to touch with their finger the bluey 

 marvel, cool as a fountain, pure as a spring, unreal as a dream. 

 Meanwhile, in a cluster of sunbeams, the great white 

 Lily, the old lord of the gardens, the only true prince among 

 all the commonalty issuing from the kitchen-garden, the 

 ditches, the copses, the pools and the moors, among the 

 strangers come from none knows where, with his invariable 

 six-petalled silver chalice, whose patent of nobility dates back 

 to that of the gods themselves: the immemorial Lily raises 

 his ancient sceptre, august, inviolate, which creates around 

 it a zone of chastity, silence and light. 



5 



I have seen them, those whom I have named and as many 



whom I have forgotten, all thus collected in the garden of 



an old sage, the same that taught me to love the bees. They 



displayed themselves in flower-plots and beds, in symmetrical 



[187] 



