COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



A sally down the garden path has quite the quality of 

 high adventure. We are accompanied by troops of ghostly 

 flowers — nameless at night. At their sign the shadows part 

 before and close in behind us, seeming to cut off retreat. 

 Here a Lily shape is cut against the dark; there a trail of 

 light tells where white Horned Violets "with winged feet" 

 speed into the night; and farther on a shimmering breadth 

 proclaims a group of heavy-headed white Phlox. 



The pergola is a purple tunnel. Here shadows press one 

 hard and even the moist cheek-touch of a pink Rose, in- 

 visible now, but serves to mark the strangeness, and one is 

 glad to reach the dimly luminous stretch of gravel at the 

 end and hear the familiar prattle of falling water in the 

 half-moon pool. This is all the sound save now and then 

 the sleepy twitter of a nestling bird, or from the song 

 sparrow a sudden silver thread of sound that cuts the 

 darkness like a falling star. And while we stand, held by the 

 imperturbable personality of the night, the moon slips 

 from her garment of clouds and sails round and golden 

 above the garden, transforming it, glorifying it, warming it 

 into the familiar. Shadows flee to the far corners but are 

 sought out by the searching light and must flee again. 

 Lovely forms develop out of gloom and stand forth in 

 "silvered symmetry"; the moon dips into the little pool, 

 and all the garden seems to stir as if breathing full — or is 

 just ourselves released from the stricture of the dark? 



Thoreau says it is necessary to see objects by moonlight 

 as well as by sunlight to get a complete notion of them. 

 The moonlit garden is the perfected creation — all our 

 dreams come true. Whatever of beauty we have longed 



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