Thus, besides and
above the love of mother and son, we had a spiritual kinship, and this
was so much to me that everything beautiful in sight or sound that
affected me came associated with her to my mind. I have found this
feeling most perfectly expressed in some lines to the Snowdrop by our
lost poet, Dolmen. I am in doubt, he wrote,
If summer brings a flower so lovable
Of such a meditative restfulness
As this, with all her roses and carnations.
The morning hardly stirs their noiseless bells;
Yet could I fancy that they whispered "Home,"
For all things gentle, all things beautiful,
I hold, my mother, for a part of thee.
So have I held. All things beautiful, but chiefly flowers. Her feeling
for them was little short of adoration. Her religious mind appeared to
regard them as little voiceless messengers from the Author of our
beings and of Nature, or as divine symbols of a place and a beauty
beyond our power to imagine.
I think it likely that when Dolmen penned those lines to the Snowdrop
it was in his mind that this was one of his mother's favourites. My
mother had her favourites too; not the roses and carnations in our
gardens, but mostly among the wild flowers growing on the pampas -
flowers which I never see in England.
