have a sympathetic ear counts against good THE 

 poetry. The poet, to convey his ideal or his GAR 

 feeling to another, requires not only that he 

 have the ideal or the feeling, and the skill to 

 express it poetically, but that he speak to such 

 as also have the sympathetic imagination. 

 There must be hearers fit. 



You can read a poem and find only words. 

 You can hear a symphony and recognize only 

 sounds. You can go into a garden and see 

 nothing but trees and plants and flowers. 



I repeat, all the elements of poetry are in a 

 garden — rhythm, melody, stately meter. There 

 is even that which corresponds to rhyme, for 

 plantings may be, where necessary to expres- 

 sion, balanced and uniform. If you will look 

 into the life of the garden, you will find the 

 drama, intense and complex. There are idyllic 

 gardens, lyrical gardens, tragic gardens, yes, 

 and I have seen comic ones. 



It is interesting to note how like the history 

 of poetry that of the garden has been. There 

 have been periods of rigid conformity to rule, 

 with symmetry and balance as the main con- 

 siderations, and with garden effects as stately 

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