The roving critic

At each new turning season I ask myself what annual phrase in the great epic of the year most pricks the senses: the stir of sap in the maples, the earliest robin coldly foraging across a bare lawn, crocuses or cowslips or trailing arbutus in the muddy wood-lot, grass appearing along a hundred borders, willow bark suddenly ripe for whistles, garden soil warm and dry enough to risk seed in it, apple blossoms and lilacs lifting the soul like music with their fragrance—the bright, young, green procession from March’s equinox to June’s accomplished solstice; or the higher pomps of summer, red and yellow—berries luxuriant on the hills, wheat in the head, corn haughty with the pride of its stature, meadow-larks that cry continually as cherubim, evenings spangled with fireflies and alive with shrill bats and angry night-hawks and repining frogs, the spare smell of mown hay, keen acrid dust flung through light air by the lean hands of drouth; or golden, purple, imperial autumn—the incredible blue of fringed gentians, apples compliant to hungry hands, grapes dewy and fresh on tingling mornings, gardens bequeathing their wealth to ready cellars, birch fires crackling on a hearth which had nearly forgotten them, leaves so scattered underfoot that every pedestrian sounds like a marching army, wild geese off for the south with eager bugles, a frost transmogrifying the world in a night; or white and black and dusky winter—sounds heard muffled over deadening snow, the gorgeous privacy of long nights, the sweet, bitter coldness of cheeks when the blast strikes them, blood triumphantly warmed by exercise even in zero weather, the crisp flesh of fruit dug from pits hid deep underground, the ringing blades of skates, the malicious whine of sleigh runners, fat companionable snow-birds with an eye on the pantry window, barns warm with the breath of ever-ruminant cows: which is best? Is there any choosing? Should we all vote for the nearest? Perhaps that is what I do when in this season I make my choice for the sundowns of August, which, by some keenness in the winds that then waken, clearly though not too brusquely prophesy, in the midst of a consoling splendour, that the epic has an end: August of the blazing noons, August of the cool nights.

The most blazing August on the heels of the most pitiless July has no terrors for the man or woman who knows Herrick and can turn from torrid cities to the meadows and brooks and hawthorn-guarded cottages of Herrick’s dainty Devon. He rises for ever with the dawn and summons his perennial Corinna, “sweet Slug-a-bed,”

Love itself cannot inflame his morning worshippers: they walk through the early streets to the woods of May, courting one another exquisitely with all the forms of a ceremonial which Horace might have sung or Watteau painted. Here, in one bright season, are daffodils and violets, primroses and gilliflowers,

tulips, pansies, marigolds, daisies, the cherry and the oak, laurels and cypresses, grapes and strawberries, spring standing side by side with purple harvest and cozy winter. Here are all exquisite scents, new rain on turf and tree, the smoke of quaint poetical sacrifices;

“the flowre of blooming Clove,” “Essences of Jessimine,” honey just brought in by bees, spiced wines, incomparable possets; the perfumes of youth and love and joy. Here, too, are delicate forms and precious colours, smooth narratives of a hundred rural customs chosen because they fit fine verses, and whimsical pious little odes and graces before meat and thanksgivings and creeds and prayers such as no other poet ever uttered. Nowhere else has adoration better lent itself to union with politeness than in this counsel to children:

Surely something ran in Herrick’s veins which was calmer than the hot blood of his kind in general. He laughs at Julia, Sapho, Anthea, Electra, Myrha, Corinna, Perilla, and at himself for having had and lost them; he tricks out his raptures of devotion with the blithest figures of speech:

he takes his ease in his country Zion as if it would last eternally and yet amuses himself with cheerful epitaphs for himself and with advice to his pretty mourners. He could be passionate enough about his calling; but he saw his world as images of marble, as pictures of gold set in silver, as charming ancient stories come to life again yet still with the dignity of remembered perfectness about them. It is a defence against August to remember the happy commentary upon Herrick which Dryden wrote when he imitated the lines to Perilla—

in that admirable invitation to another cool world:

LAKE AND BIRD

I had one perfect day during one imperfect weekend. I woke immensely early to a morning full of birds on a rough hill sloping down from an old Berkshire parsonage by many ways and windings to the devious Housatonic. I went dabbling on my knees among innumerable daisies and buttercups and black-eyed Susans to find enough wild strawberries for my breakfast, and ate them with reckless oceans of cream kept the night in a spring so cold that on the most tropic days vessels come up from it clouded and beaded. I neglected the newspapers all day, hoeing and joyfully baking in my garden in the confident expectation of a blessed reward. And then at six precisely, by the sun, not the clock, I slipped, with some splashing, be it admitted, for my dive was eager, into the cool, sweet, quiet, well-sunned, but still tonic waters of an unforgettable lake. Repaid by the first keen shock for the whole day’s scorching, I shouted and ploughed to a deeper pool I know, where the water is never troubled and where now its crystal loneliness was broken by nothing but a few pink laurel-blossoms wind-shaken down upon it. Here I drifted, halcyon for that day, and waited. Not too late it came, the timid challenge, the flaunting confession, the liquid lament, the whistled prayer of the hermit thrush, pulsing through the replying air. I let the spell take me, and lay for a long while at the summit of rapture, not quite sure which was I, which was calm lake, and which was radiant bird.

FIREFLIES IN CORNWALL

As I hurried down the muddy road I saw fireflies ahead of me splashing the new darkness. And then suddenly the scene widened. On my left a broad meadow rolled away up the mountain; on my right lay a broader region of marshy ground sacred to flags and frogs. I knew that over all that green meadow buttercups were contending with daisies which should make it white or yellow, but now it was black with the night though somehow brightened by the gleaming mist. In the swamp, too, I knew there would soon be irises blooming, though now it had nothing but the paler iridescence of the quiet drizzle. And yet the night was alive with an uncanny and unaccustomed splendour. The fireflies were holding some sort of carnival, it seemed, moving up and down the meadow slope in glimmering processions and swarming thickly over the marsh which they almost illuminated with their fitful and inclusive flashes. There must have been thousands of them, for the usual intervals of darkness never came, and every instant was spangled. But the marvel of the occasion was not the number of lights but the magnitude of them. By some trick of the mist, some reflection from the particles of water suspended in the air, every firefly shone not as a vivid speck but as a slow, large, bland splotch of mellow light. Over the swamp they were so crowded and cast so many reflections upon the water and wet earth and dripping flags that they had created the perfect semblance of a lake on which numberless canoes rode softly with dancing lanterns. Up the mountain meadow they seemed, and doubtless were, less numerous, but the wonder continued, for they glowed here and there on the rising hillside like searchers beating through the grass for something lost. And, most exquisite of all, now and then on the high ridge of the hill behind the meadow a lantern would flash and move down into the carnival or up out of it. This hollow of the hills was a cup of light, filled to the brim, which continually spilled over only to be replenished by these bright creatures of the dark.

GARDENS

In any winter of our discontent let us think of gardens. The sun looks north again, March is stirring somewhere, and in a few stubborn weeks there will be another green spring with loud, cheerful robins, insistent grass, and buds ready to turn pink or white at the warm touch of the advancing season. We have lived long enough on the stores we laid up from the harvest of last year. Like bears, we have grown thin in our hollow trees and must resume our occupations. Too much winter can destroy the genial sap that spring annually renews in the veins of men as surely as in trees. Cities, which have built strong barriers against the seasons, forget them, but they bring morals no less than weather. The seasons are teachers that never cease teaching, and examples that never fail to move us. Our tempers follow the sun.

Though it is true that the senses relax and ripen in a garden, a garden is more than a sensual delight. Roses grow there, and radishes; so does patience. That man who puts seed into a furrow at the same moment tucks his hand through the crooked elbow of Time and falls into step. He knows he must abide the days, must endure hot and cold, wet and dry, the ups and downs of immeasurable nature. Infected almost at once with peace, he feels his will surrendering its fretful individuality to the ampler cause with which he has involved his fortunes. He sees that he cannot profitably scold the rain; he cannot wear a chip on his shoulder and dare the wind to knock it off. The stature of his will shrinks when he learns how little he means to the rain or the wind, and the stature of his wisdom increases. Vigilant of course he must remain. He must take quick advantage of sunshine, as sailors do of the tides. He must foreknow the storm by its signs. In the long run, his prosperity will depend upon his eyes and hands, but he will be aware that he thrives by virtue of the patience with which he tends a process which is ageless and immortal.

Nor will he be patient merely for hours or months. As the seasons depart and recur year after year, he will begin to realize what centuries mean, epochs, and aeons. It is the weather which varies, not the seasons. The gardener in his little plot looks out less feverishly at elections and revolutions than other men. He has seen clouds before and has lived through them confident of the sun. From an experience stronger than dogma he knows that just after night there is dawn, and that every winter is succeeded by a spring. What in another might be a shallow optimism is in him a faith rooted in subsoil and bedrock, bred and nourished in the vast, slow, undeviating habits of soil and sky. He is conservative because he has seen the seasons perennially pass one into the other without convulsions. He is radical because each spring he has had to set the spade into his sleepy ground, has had to tear it open and establish the new harvest on fresh seed. Others may stutter about the strife of old and new, but the gardener sees old and new eternally linked together with human toil. He perceives that history continues, for he has observed the grass. He understands, not dimly but certainly, that the tread of armies or the din of melting dynasties and shattered governments may indeed touch him in his garden, may even drive him forth into desolation, but that the work of the garden and the duty of the gardener will go on. To the end of the world there must be seed and toil and harvests.