The sun-dial forms a perfect ornament at the intersection of the garden paths. Every one responds to the quaint beauty and mystery of the sun-dial with its dark shadow that creeps quietly across the dial and tells the hours so softly. As Charles Lamb says: "It is the measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring by and birds to apportion their silver warblings by." Nothing has a more antique air than the sun-dial. The simple baluster pillar is a good model, and the base should be surrounded by a circle of grass.
This grassy ring is the "wabe," Where Lewis Carroll's "slithy toves" did "gyre and gimbel" in the immortal poem "Jabberwocky."
FOUNTAINS, SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The sun-dial can also be placed at the end of a path, if the path is important enough to warrant it.
In our Shakespeare garden I suggest using a Shakespearian quotation for the inscription, such as, for example:
or
or
So do our minutes hasten to their end.
or
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.