THE ROMAN GARDEN IN ENGLAND 



Here, from this summer-house, I look upon an apiary, 

 a bed of Violets, a little wood that gives shelter to the 

 birds, a running stream where trout leap in the pools 

 My Roman friend, had he built his house here, would 

 have looked, as I look, at green meadows, and across them 

 to a wild heath on which rise the very mounds he must 

 have known, British earthworks, and the heap-up burial 

 places of great British chiefs. Round about the house 

 grow many flowers that would seem homely to my 

 ghostly friend, Roses, Lilies, Narcissi, Violets, Poppies. 

 Here he might have sat and contemplated, as Pliny did, 

 and taken his pleasure of the sun, the wind, the birds. 

 The sea he could not have heard, since it is eight miles 

 away, but he could well have seen storms come up over 

 the western downs, known that the Roman galleys were 

 seeking shelter in the coves and harbours, and noticed 

 how the gulls flew screaming inland, and the Egyptian 

 swallows flew low before the coming tempest. 



This house that I know is a simple affair, compared 

 to the elaborate design of Pliny's ; it is a small thatched 

 single apartment built in the elbow of the garden wall. 

 It is not tuned to trap the sun, or dull the sounds of the 

 violence of the winds, but its solitary window opens wide 

 to let in the sound of the bees at work, the thrush singing 

 in the Lilac tree, or tapping his snails on a big stone by the 

 side of the garden path. It has a shelf for books, two 

 chairs, a writing table, and an infinity of those odds and 

 ends a person collects who deals with bees. Withal it is 

 pervaded by a very sweet smell of honey. 



Then there are ghosts for company if the books, the 

 birds, and the bees fail. There is my Roman to speak 

 for his villa, for the glories of the town near by. There 

 is the British chieftain whose mound is not two miles 

 away, a mound where his charred ashes lie, but the urn 

 that held them is on a shelf overhead. There are Saxons 



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