3 ° 
THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
grudging as to neighbour closely on contempt. “ They 
grow like weeds,” says he, and turns coldly away to 
seek his tomato-house or some other more congenial 
field of labour. 
At first I only set them in the smooth sward round 
about the fountain; but afterwards came wisdom, and 
now they make a little Eden of their own in the broad 
space of growing grass that just divides the desert and 
the sown, the flower-garden proper and the wilderness. 
By the stream side, beneath the shadow of high trees, 
and out in the open meadow, they show with equal 
radiance. Some thousands, too, are flowering in the 
orchard, where, by their independent manner of being, 
they do not “ deceive the trees ”; neither shall they 
prove at all meddlesome at haying-time, for long ere 
then they will have vanished, almost without trace. 
All summer long, even amid the thronging press of 
richer rivalries and perfumes more insistent than that 
rare aroma of theirs, their benefits are not forgotten, 
but still on noons of burnished heat you are apt to call 
to mind again the cool sweetness and shallow lilac-blue 
shadows of gentle April days when the birds sang all 
together and the Star Narcissi danced like fairies in the 
grass. 
The Poet’s (or, as some will have it, the Pheasant’s- 
Eye) narcissus comes later, and is somewhat shyer of 
habit and less faithful to its tryst with the year; yet one 
would be loth to miss it from the pageant or spring. 
The visitant that until lately I have chiefly missed has 
been the violet, for the inclemency of the early year laid 
waste my violet-beds, and left the little plants all but 
