A Moonlight Garden 
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silvery moonshine, with every radiant flower adoring 
the moon with wide-open eyes, and pouring forth 
incense at her altar. And it was peopled with shadowy 
forms shaped of pearly mists and dews ; and white 
night moths bore messages for them from flower to 
flower — this garden then was the garden of my 
dreams. 
Thoreau complained to himself that he had not 
put duskiness enough into his words in his descrip- 
tion of his evening walks. He longed to have the 
peculiar and classic severity of his sentences, the 
color of his style, tell his readers that his scene was 
laid at night without saying so in exact words. I, 
too, have not written as I wished, by moonlight; I 
can tell of moonlight in the garden, but I desire 
more; I want you to see and feel this moonlight 
garden, as did Emily Dickinson her garden by 
moonlight: — 
“ And still within the summer’s night 
A something so transporting bright 
I clap my hands to see.” 
But perhaps I can no more gather it into words than 
I can bottle up the moonlight itself. 
This lovely garden, varied in shape, and extending 
in many and diverse directions and corners, bears as 
its crown a magnificent double flower border over 
seven hundred feet long ; with a broad straight path 
trimly edged with Box adown through its centre, and 
with a flower border twelve feet wide on either side. 
This was laid out and planted in 1833 by the parents 
of Major Poore, after extended travel in England, 
