Garden of the Hesperides

“ When the ancients looked each evening at the glowing west, they pictured it as a far-distant country, more wonderful than any ever seen by mortal eyes. Here in this land of heart's desire lay the Garden of the Hesperides, where a dragon guarded the golden apples that grew on a wonderful tree which had sprung up miraculously to grace the wedding of Jupiter and Juno. In this far-off sunset land were also the Isles of the Blest,77221 where mortals who had led virtuous lives were transported without ever tasting of death. Here the blessed of the gods enjoyed an eternity of bliss ”

“ And, even in the old, old, half-forgotten times, before the garden of the Hesperides was overrun with weeds, a great many people doubted whether there could be real trees that bore apples of solid gold upon their branches. ”

“ He therefore made no more attempts to escape, but told the hero how to find the garden of the Hesperides, and likewise warned him of many difficulties which must be overcome, before he could arrive thither.
“You must go on, thus and thus,” said the Old Man of the Sea, after taking the points of the compass, “till you come in sight of a very tall giant, who holds the sky on his shoulders. And the giant, if he happens to be in the humor, will tell you exactly where the garden of the Hesperides lies.” ”

“ Convent and villa, cottage and farmhouse, peep out of embowering verdure, whilst our road is shaded in many places by the overhanging boughs of blossoming almond and loquat trees. The whole region is in truth a veritable garden of the Hesperides, where in the mild equable climate fruit and flowers ripen and bloom without a break throughout the rolling year.
POZZANO
“Tall thriving trees confess’d the fruitful mould ”

“ The improved soil, he thinks, will retain moisture sufficient to keep the turf growing all the summer, and, consequently, green.
Garden of the Hesperides.
Lieutenant Beachey, in his Travels in Cyrene, recently published, has thrown some curious light on the ancient account of these celebrated gardens. It appears, that, like many other wonders, ancient and modern, when reduced to simple truth, they are little more than common occurrences. Baron Humboldt and Mr. Bullock have reduced the floating gardens of Mexico to mud banks, with ditches between ”

“ Very well, uncle; I feel quite tempted to fail, to inveigle you into a sensible termination to a foolish story. We often invent tales in the interval at school, and I'll give you one that my schoolmates like. It is called
[Pg 253] ;
The Rose of Hesperus; A FAIRY TALE.
Every one has heard of the Garden of Hesperus, famous in all ancient times for its exquisite beauty. Its golden fruit, more precious by far than the fleece of Jason, in search of which heroes perilled their lives on board the good ship Argo, was watched by a terrible dragon, whose eyes were never sealed by slumber. ”

“ The modern town lies south-west of the original site. Certain large natural pits which are found in the plain behind, and have luxuriant gardens at the bottom, are supposed to have originated the myth of the Gardens of the Hesperides. ”

“ Others, again, are sometimes red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, fairy food, too beautiful to eat,—apple of the Hesperides, apple of the evening sky! But like shells and pebbles on the sea-shore, they must be seen as they sparkle amid the withering leaves in some dell in the woods, in the autumnal air, or as they lie in the wet grass, and not when they have wilted and faded in the house. ”

“ Like human beings, buildings are improved by a little character; there is plenty of insipidity in the world in flesh and blood as well as in bricks, or stones, and mortar.
The old bird-haunted garden behind the rectory—especially beloved by blackbirds and thrushes—with its old-fashioned flower-beds, its summer-house, dark copper beeches, and sunny lawn sloping to the south, remains much as when the Tennyson family were there, and a rustic gate, just as of old, leads to the meadows and the brook that “runs babbling to the plain.” ”

“ But, both in the Greek mind and Turner’s, this natural meaning of the legend was a completely subordinate one. The moral significance of it lay far deeper. In the second, but principal sense, the Hesperides were not daughters of Atlas, nor connected with the winds of the west, but with its splendor. They are properly the nymphs of the sunset, and are the daughters of night, having many brothers and sisters, of whom I shall take Hesiod’s account.
§ 6. “And the Night begat Doom, and short-withering Fate, and Death. ”

“ The Hesperides--daughters of sunset--danced golden-footed on the threshold of evening, and their glimmering skirts swept earth also, set radiance upon Eylesbarrow and hung like a beacon of fire against the deep storm-purple of the east. Thrice this glory waxed and waned; then all light vanished; the colour song was sung; the day died.
Not observing these gracious phenomena upon Night's fringes, the mother, the man and his maiden went in together. ”

“ I began to keep a watch on the garden of No. 19. In the morning after I had dressed, in the evening when I returned from the office, and at night before going to bed I went to the window of the top room at the back of my house and examined my neighbor's garden carefully. Sometimes at night I would watch it for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes at a time. In the bottom of my heart I wanted to see a beast, a real beast no matter how hideous or loathsome, a beast that you could touch. It was that, the possibility that it was a beast of another world, an intangible horror, which harassed me. ”

“ The dew was falling, the dusk closing, as I trotted briskly homewards down the road. Lonely spaces everywhere, above and around. Only Hesperus hung in the sky, solitary, pure, ineffably far-drawn and remote; yet infinitely heartening, somehow, in his valorous isolation. ”

“ Hesperis.—H. matronalis, 1 to 2 ft., is the old garden Rocket, of which some double forms with white and purplish blossoms are amongst the choicest of border flowers. They require a rich loamy soil, not too dry, and should be divided and transplanted into fresh soil annually or every second year, in the early autumn season.
Heuchera.—H. sanguinea and its varieties are charming and brilliant border plants with scarlet flowers in long racemes. Rich and well-drained soil. ”

“ They belong to the hesperis or dame's violet, a common wild-flower in this valley. Upon my left is the abrupt stony slope of the gorge. Between it and the meadow are shrubs of yellow jessamine starred with blossom. But the stony steep that dazzles the eyes with the sun's reflected glare has its flowers too. Nature, in her great passion for beauty, even draws it out of the disintegrated fragments of time-worn rock, whose banks would otherwise be as stark and dry as the desert sand. Lightly as flakes of snow the frail blossoms of the white rock-rose lie upon the stones. ”

“ Then the muttering ceased; and I knew that the air had been full of unspeakable horror, and that it was clear again.
"What ever was it?" I cried in a high, shaky voice.
There was a pause; then the man said in a hoarse, rasping voice, "What was what?"
"The beast in your garden."
"There is no beast in my garden." ”

“ Then, just outside the garden are big bushes of brilliant berberries, that turn in autumn, red, like a regiment of English soldiers in peace-time, and that were so highly esteemed for the making of “conserves,” in the Middle Ages.
How pretty such old-fashioned gardens are—very tiny, very dainty, and meant to be very formal and trim. They seem little worlds all of their own; little centres of human care and affection, and outside all appears a wilderness in comparison. ”

“ Why did all her thoughts revert to the past, to that particular walk in the garden where the sunflowers and china asters grew, and the small fruit-trees threw long shadows across the cabbage beds. The sun was shining through the high hedge but the air did not resound with the song of birds. To-morrow when the day waned, she would be far away from this homely spot, and when she returned, the fruit-trees would be bare, and snow would cover the ground. ”

“ It fell at my feet as I walked in my garden between the white-blossomed espaliers. I looked up to see who had thrown it, but in all the circle of blossoming gardens and red roofs that surrounded me nothing moved. ”

“ The airs were always astir, helping the soft designs of Nature, loosening a leaf from its stem and bearing it to the sand, striking a berry from its place and causing it to drop at Domini’s feet, giving a faded geranium petal the courage to leave its more vivid companions and resign itself to the loss of the place it could no longer fill with beauty. Very delicate was the touch of the dying upon the yellow sand. It increased the sense of pervading mystery and made Domini more deeply conscious of the pulsing life of the garden. ”

“ With their clothes in their hands, without fear for the darkness, without feeling for the morning-frost, rushing, intoxicated, shouting, they hurry down-stairs into the dark room. Fancy riots in the pastry and fruit perfume of the still eclipsed treasures, and paints her air-castles by the glimmering of the Hesperides-fruit with which the Birch-tree is loaded. While their mother strikes a light, the falling sparks sportfully open and shroud the dainties on the table, and the many-colored grove on the wall ”

“ Here and there new arches of rustic woodwork, in horrible designs, stretch over the paths, their ugliness partly hidden by climbing Roses of the Seven Sisters kind, or Clematis, or Honeysuckle, or Jasmine. Many trees in the garden are old enough to exchange memories of a hundred years ago; the orchard alone boasts a venerable congregation of old trees, some grey with lichen, some bowed down with the result of full crops.
New ghosts walk the garden paths in crinolines and Leghorn hats, and side curls, talking to gentlemen with glossy side whiskers, peg-top trousers, and tartan waistcoats. ”

“ A sweeter flower did Nature ne'er put forth, Nor fairer garden yet was never known: The maidens danced about it morn and noon, And learned bards of it their ditties made; The nimble fairies by the pale-faced moon Watered the root and kissed her pretty shade. But well-a-day!—the gardener careless grew; The maids and fairies both were kept away, And in a drought the caterpillars threw Themselves upon the bud and every spray. God shield the stock! If heaven send no supplies, The fairest blossom of the garden dies. ”

“ On every side were old terraced walls covered with Roses and flowering vines, banked with shrubs, and standing in beds of old-time flowers running over with bloom; but behind the house, stretching up the lovely hillside, was The Garden, and when we entered it, lo! it was a White Garden with edgings of pure and seemly white Candytuft from the forcing beds, and flowers of Spring Snowflake and Star of Bethlehem and Jonquils; and there were white-flowered shrubs of spring, the earliest Spiræas and Deutzias ”

“ The windows opened on a large, old-fashioned garden, full of old-fashioned flowers—stocks, roses, honeysuckles, and pinks; and that again led into a grassy orchard, abounding with fruit-trees, a picturesque country church with its yews and lindens on one side, and beyond, a down as smooth as velvet, dotted with rich islands of coppice, hazel, woodbine, hawthorn and holly reaching up into the young oaks, and overhanging flowery patches of primroses, wood-sorrel, wild hyacinths, and wild strawberries. ”

“ Rapture leaps in us and hope carries us away, and our old garden appears to us again, in spite of its long paths strewn with dead branches, living and pure and bright and full of golden gleams.
Something shining and undaunted, I know not what, creeps into our blood; and in the quick kisses that, ardently, frantically, we give each other, we re-embody the immensity and fulness of summer. ”

“ As in the refectory, everything here is in order for the monks when they return. But they will find more change in the garden below. The rare plants, the ebony and the hyssop, the cactuses and the palm (which made us think less of Sodoma's frescos than we had before) , the pomegranates and the artichokes, are all there. But weeds grow in the paths, and by the old gray well, and in among the herbs; roses have run riot in the centre of the garden and turned it into a wild tangled growth. ”

“ For examples of the excellences we have noted—the chastity of colour and noble justice of composition, the fruitful and faithful touches of landscape incident—almost any page of the poem might be turned up. Compare the Hesperian with the Circean garden, the nameless northern desert lands with the wood of Medea's transformation, or the seaward bent where Jason "died strangely." No flower of the landscape is slurred, but no flower is obtrusive ”

“ The stranger accepted the nosegay and embraced the giver, kissing her cheek. She then walked about the garden, which was surrounded with high walls, and, at this time of the year, had but little sunlight. A thick ivy covered the black walls, clothing them with a dusky green tapestry, against which the young shoots of the fruit-trees, and the beds of primroses, crocuses, and hyacinths stood out in pleasing contrast. The children were playing in one corner, and labored on in their own irregular little garden without noticing the visitor. ”

“ Our garden is no longer bridegroom of the light,
Where once we saw the phlox in glorious surge and flare;
Gladioli, in dust, once violent, upright,
Lingeringly have lain them down to perish there.
All is without strength or beauty, without fire,
Fleeing and quailing and crumbling and passing sadly by;
Oh, turn on me your eyes of light, for I desire
There to seek a comer of our early sky!
It is there alone our light may still abide,
The light that filled the garden once for you and me,
Long ago, when our lily lifted its white pride
And hollyhocks were an ascending ardency. ”