CHAPTER XII 



WHITE FLOWERS IN THE NIGHT GARDEN 



And still within a summer's night 

 A something so transporting bright 

 I clap my hands to see. 



— Emily Dickinson. 



THE garden has its day side and its night side, as 

 different as day and night. The night garden is not 

 the place we know by day; there seems nothing 

 personal or familiar in its simple masses of light and dark. 

 We seem to have had no part in fashioning the vast purple 

 gloom, the pearly visions, the sharp, pale shapes that part 

 the shadows. It is not ours, nor are the tall white forms at 

 our side creatures grown of our fostering love and care. 

 Only the fragrances of the night are familiar — Honeysuckle, 

 White Tobacco, Stock seek us out like the warm pressure of 

 a hand. 



We are conscious of a powerful reserve in the graven 

 beauty of the night garden. It gives us little, drawing into 

 itself while yet it presses upon us with a curious impersonal 

 insistence. Its stillness is more exciting than sound, and 

 every small happening seems fraught with significance; 

 the silent flitting of a moth, the delicate rush of a capricious 

 breeze fixes all our attention. 



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