VISITING THE GARDENS 177 



paradises where the blaze that scares away lions 

 or leopards only attracts darting spiders and 

 scurrying scorpions to a couch already made 

 restless by buzzing and biting pests ; where the 

 ground hides flesh-burrowing ticks and fleas, and 

 the air is thick with invisible stings, and the 

 trees bear venomous caterpillars ; where one 

 durst not smell a flower for fear of inhaling 

 some noxious parasite, and our loathsomest 

 bugs would seem hardly worth noticing among 

 bloated cockroaches and hideous centipedes ; 

 where countless flies lay seeds of death in man 

 and beast, not to speak of clouds of locusts that 

 sometimes darken the sky like a snow-storm, 

 and if they could cross the Channel, might fall 

 on this Thames-side garden to eat up its greenery 

 in an hour. 



And the noises of those sweltering thickets, 

 which at night a new-comer in South America 

 compares to some factory worked by whirling, 

 whistling and hissing demons ! Even the gloomy 

 stillness of noon, broken by the fall of some big 

 fruit thudding to the ground like a cannon-ball, 

 or by some seed-capsule exploding with a report 

 like a shot, even this heavy siesta of Nature is 

 not altogether voiceless, for beneath it, as Hum- 



23 



