Spring in a Shropshire AbbeyGaskell, Catherine Henrietta Milnes, Lady
General
Spring in a Shropshire Abbey
Gaskell, Catherine Henrietta Milnes, Lady
Shropshire (England) -- Description and travel; Wenlock Abby (England)
Then in the peace of that exquisite summer day, I saw as in a dream
that blest region which Sir Philip Sidney has painted and called
Arcadia, "where the morning did strew roses and violets in the
heavenly floor against the coming of the sun, where nightingales sung
their wrong-caused sorrow;" where the hills rose, their proud heights
garnished with stately trees, beneath which silver streams murmured
softly amidst meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing
flowers. Where pretty lambs with bleating outcry craved their dam's
comfort, and where a shepherd-boy piped as though he never could grow
old, whilst a shepherdess sang and knitted all the while, so that it
seemed "that the voice comforted her hands to work, and the hands
kept time to the voice music."
In that sweet and happy country, where light and sun and blue sky
were constant joys, where the houses were all scattered, "but not
from mutual succour," where the joys of "accompanable solitariness
were to be found combined with the pleasures of civil wildness," I
allowed my fancy to linger.
Then as butterflies flitted past in all the pomp of summer splendour
in my Abbey garden, I thought for a moment of Mistress Tuggy's bowers
of passion-flower at Westminster, of which Gerard wrote, and of which
he told us "there was always good plenty." I thought also of that gay
procession to the Parson of Tittershall, where merry maids went,
bearing with them garlands of red roses, and of that wreath laid
through many centuries, in beautiful Tong Church.
I liked to imagine Theobalds, where it was said a man might wander
two miles and yet never come to the end of the great gardens; or to
think of that great pleasaunce of Frederick, Duke of Würzburg, where
it was said that it was easy for a stranger to lose his way, so vast
was the space of the enclosure.
[Sidenote: ELIZABETHAN GARDENS]
Then I should have liked to have known the great gardens of
Kenilworth, where proud Dudley entertained the Maiden Queen.
There, according to Master Humphrey Martin, every fruit tree had its
place. In the centre of the pleasaunce stood, he wrote, an aviary and
a fountain of white marble, where tench, bream, and carp, eel and
perch "all did play pleasantly," and "beside which delicious fruits,
cherries, strawberries, might be eaten from the stalk."
In the Elizabethan garden men were not content with gay blossoms
alone; sweet odours were necessary to complete their standard of
delight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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