You Avoid The House In Lively Dread Of A Lone Housekeeper,
But You Make Your Way On By The Stables;
You remember that gable
with all its neatly nailed trophies of fitchets and hawks and owls,
now slowly falling to
Pieces; you remember that stable, and that -
but the doors are all fastened that used to be standing ajar, the
paint of things painted is blistered and cracked, grass grows in
the yard; just there, in October mornings, the keeper would wait
with the dogs and the guns - no keeper now; you hurry away, and gain
the small wicket that used to open to the touch of a lightsome
hand - it is fastened with a padlock (the only new looking thing),
and is stained with thick, green damp; you climb it, and bury
yourself in the deep shade, and strive but lazily with the tangling
briars, and stop for long minutes to judge and determine whether
you will creep beneath the long boughs and make them your archway,
or whether perhaps you will lift your heel and tread them down
under foot. Long doubt, and scarcely to be ended till you wake
from the memory of those days when the path was clear, and chase
that phantom of a muslin sleeve that once weighed warm upon your
arm.
Wild as that, the nighest woodland of a deserted home in England,
but without its sweet sadness, is the sumptuous garden of Damascus.
Forest trees, tall and stately enough if you could see their lofty
crests, yet lead a tussling life of it below, with their branches
struggling against strong numbers of bushes and wilful shrubs. The
shade upon the earth is black as night. High, high above your
head, and on every side all down to the ground, the thicket is
hemmed in and choked up by the interlacing boughs that droop with
the weight of roses, and load the slow air with their damask
breath. {45} There are no other flowers. Here and there, there
are patches of ground made clear from the cover, and these are
either carelessly planted with some common and useful vegetable, or
else are left free to the wayward ways of Nature, and bear rank
weeds, moist-looking and cool to the eyes, and freshening the sense
with their earthy and bitter fragrance. There is a lane opened
through the thicket, so broad in some places that you can pass
along side by side; in some so narrow (the shrubs are for ever
encroaching) that you ought, if you can, to go on the first and
hold back the bough of the rose-tree. And through this wilderness
there tumbles a loud rushing stream, which is halted at last in the
lowest corner of the garden, and there tossed up in a fountain by
the side of the simple alcove. This is all.
Never for an instant will the people of Damascus attempt to
separate the idea of bliss from these wild gardens and rushing
waters.
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