Old Time Gardens 
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Lilacs, and occasionally a white one ; and as a rarity 
the graceful, but sometimes rather spindling, Persian 
Lilacs, known since 1650 in gardens, and shown on 
page 1 5 1. How the old gardens would have stared 
at the new double Lilacs, which have luxuriant 
plumes of bloom twenty inches long. 
The “pensile Lilac” has been sung by many poets ; 
but the spirit of the flower has been best portrayed 
in verse by Elizabeth Akers. I can quote but a 
single stanza from so many beautiful ones. 
“ How fair it stood, with purple tassels hung. 
Their hue more tender than the tint of Tyre ; 
How musical amid their fragrance rung 
The bee’s bassoon, keynote of spring’s glad choir ! 
0 languorous Lilac ! still in time’s despite 
1 see thy plumy branches all alight 
With new-born butterflies which loved to stay 
And bask and banquet in the temperate ray 
Of springtime, ere the torrid heats should be : 
For these dear memories, though the world grow gray, 
I sing thy sweetness, lovely Lilac tree ! ” 
Another poet of the Lilac is Walt Whitman. 
He tells his delight in “the Lilac tall and its blos- 
soms of mastering odor.” He sings: “with the 
birds a warble of joy for Lilac-time.” That noble, 
heroic dirge, the Burial Hymn of Lincoln , begins : — 
“When Lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d.” 
The poet stood under the blossoming Lilacs when 
he learned of the death of Lincoln, and the scent 
and sight of the flowers ever bore the sad associa- 
tion. In this poem is a vivid description of— 
