The Rose has a Powerful Virtue

The Rose has one powerful virtue to boast above all the flowers of the field:

When its leaves are all dead, and fine colours are lost,

Still how sweet a perfume it will yield.

                                      By Isaac Watts

                                      English theologian and hymn writer

                                      (1674-1748)

GARDEN VERSE - The Gardener

THE GARDENER

The gardener does not love to talk,
He makes me keep the gravel walk;
And when he puts his tools away,
He locks the door and takes the key.

Away behind the currant row
Where no one else but cook may go,
Far in the plots, I see him dig,
Old and serious, brown and big.

He digs the flowers, green, red, and blue,
Nor wishes to be spoken to.
He digs the flowers and cuts the hay,
And never seems to want to play.

Silly gardener! summer goes,
And winter comes with pinching toes,
When in the garden bare and brown
You must lay your barrow down.

Well now, and while the summer stays,
To profit by these garden days,
O how much wiser you would be
To play at Indian wars with me!

                                       Robert Louis Stevenson

GARDEN VERSE - What is a Garden by Arkell

What is a garden?

            Goodness knows!

You’ve got a garden,

            I suppose:

To one it is a piece of ground

For which some gravel must be found.

To some, those seeds that must be sown,

To some a lawn that must be mown.

To some a ton of Cheddar rocks;

To some it means a window box;

To some, who dare not pick a flower-

A man, at eighteen pence an hour.

To some, it is a silly jest

About the latest garden pest;

To some, a haven where they find

Forgetfulness and peace of mind. . .

What is a garden

            Large or small

‘Tis just a garden

            After all.

Reginald Arkell

“What Is a Garden”

Green Fingers (1935)

GARDEN VERSE - Love of Garden by Helps

"As for our love of gardens, it is the last refuge of art in the minds and souls of many Englishmen; if we did not care for gardens, I hardly know what in the way of beauty we should care for.

                                                                                          Sir Arthur Helps
                                                                                          Companion of My Solitude (1851)

GARDEN VERSE - Give A Man by Arthur Young

"Give a man secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him nine years’ lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert."

                                                                         

                                                                        Arthur Young

                                                                        Travels in France (1792)

GARDEN VERSE - Digging

Digging

To-day I think

Only with scents, - scents dead leaves yield,

And bracken, and wild carrot’s seed,

And the square mustard field;

Odours that rise

When the spade wounds the root of tree,

Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,

Rhubarb or celery;

The smoke’s smell, too,

Flowing from where a bonfire burns

The dead, the waste, the dangerous,

And all to sweetness turns.

It is enough

To smell, to crumble the dark earth,

While the robin sings over again

Sad songs of Autumn mirth.

                                                                Edward Thomas
                                                                 (1878-1917)

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GARDEN VERSE - A Garden is by Thoreau

“A garden is but Nature debauched.”

                                                 

                                         Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

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