224 
Old Time Gardens 
Near the close of his Endymion he wrote : — 
“ Nor much it grieves 
To die, when summer dies on the cold sward. 
Why, I have been a butterfly, a lord 
Of flowers, garlands, love-knots, silly posies. 
Groves, meadows, melodies, and arbor roses ; 
My kingdom’s at its death, and just it is 
That I should die with it.” 
In the summer of 1 8 1 6, under the influence of a 
happy day at Hampstead, he wrote that lovely poem, 
“ I stood tiptoe upon a little hill.” After a descrip- 
tion of the general scene, a special corner of beauty 
is thus told : — 
“ A bush of May flowers with the bees about them — ■ 
Ah, sure no bashful nook could be without them — 
And let a lush Laburnum oversweep them. 
And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them 
Moist, cool, and green ; and shade the Violets 
That they may bind the moss in leafy nets. 
A Filbert hedge with Wild-brier over trim’d. 
And clumps of Woodbine taking the soft wind. 
Upon their summer thrones. . . .” 
Then come these wonderful lines, which belittle 
all other descriptions of Sweet Peas : — 
“ Here are Sweet Peas, on tiptoe for a flight. 
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white. 
And taper fingers catching at all things 
To bind them all about with tiny wings.” 
Keats states in his letters that his love of flowers 
was wholly for those of the “ common garden sort,” 
