THE COTTAGE GARDEN 



country, grown to know love of little things, nurses a 

 seedling as if it were his conscience, patches his drugget 

 as if it were a verse he'd like to polish. Out of the 

 vast dreary waste of faces who pass by unheeding, 

 and the unseeing world that does not care whether he 

 lives or dies, he makes his small hoard of treasures, as a 

 child hides marbles, thinking them precious stones — 

 as, indeed, they are to those who have eyes to see — 

 and, be they books, or pictures, pots of plants, or curious 

 conceits in china, they all answer for flowers, for the 

 bright-coloured spots of comfort in a life of doubt. 



No man thinks this out carefully, and sets about to plan 

 his garden in this spirit : he feels a need, and meets it as 

 he can. In this manner we are all cottage gardeners. 



In days gone by — days of serfdom, oppression, battle, 

 slavery, poverty — the countryman passed his day waiting 

 for the next blow, living between pestilences, and pray- 

 ing in the dark for small sparks of comfort. The 

 monks kept the land sweet by growing herbs in sheltered 

 places ; the countryman looked dully at Periwinkles 

 and Roses and Columbines, thought them pretty, and 

 passed by. Even the meanest flower, Shepherd's-eye 

 or Celandine, was too high for him to reach. (The 

 poet who keeps Jove's Thunder on his mantelpiece 

 would understand that.) Roses were common enough 

 even in the dark ages ; the English hedgerow threw out 

 its fingers of Wild Rose and scented the air — but where 

 was the man with a nose for fragrance when a mailed 

 hand was on his shoulder. Those Roses on the Field 

 of Tewkesbury — think of them stained with blood and 

 flowering over rotting corpses. 



" I sometimes think that never blows so red 

 The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled ; 

 That every Hyacinth the Garden wears 

 Dropt in its lap from some once lovely Head 

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