Its various pleasures to the sense,
Here health itself doth live,
That salt of life which doth to all a relish give;
Its standing pleasure and intrinsic wealth,
The body's virtue, and the soul's good fortune, health.
The tree of life when it in Eden stood,
Did its immortal head to heaven rear;
It lasted a tall cedar till the flood,
Now a small thorny shrub it doth appear,
Nor will it thrive too everywhere;
It always here is freshest seen,
'Tis only here an evergreen:
If, through the strong and beauteous fence
Of temperance and innocence,
And wholesome labors and a quiet mind,
Diseases passage find,
They must fight for it, and dispute it hard
Before they can prevail;
Scarce any plant is growing here,
Which against death some weapon does not bear:
Let cities boast that they provide
For life the ornaments of pride;
But 'tis the country and the field
That furnish it with staff and shield."
Nor can we spare his praises of budding and grafting from our account: —
"We nowhere art do so triumphant see,
As when it grafts or buds a tree;
In other things we count it to excel
If it a docile scholar can appear
To nature, and but imitates her well:
It overrules and is her master here:
It imitates her Maker's power divine,
And changes her sometimes, and sometimes does refine;
It does like grace, the fallen tree restore
To its blest state of Paradise before;
Who would not joy to see his conquering hand
O'er all the vegetable world command,
And the wild giants of the wood, receive
What laws he's pleased to give?
He bids the ill-natured crab produce
The gentle apple's winy juice,
The golden fruit that worthy is
Of Galatea's purple kiss;
He does the savage hawthorn teach
To bear the medlar and the pear;
He bids the rustic plum to rear
A noble trunk and be a peach;
Even Daphne's coyness he does mock,
And weds the cherry to her stock,
Though she refused Apollo's suit,
Even she, that chaste and virgin tree,
Now wonders at herself to see
That she's a mother made, and blushes in her fruit."
"Thick growing thyme, and roses wet with dew,
Are sacred to the sisterhood divine."
As orchards to man, so are flowers and herbs to women. Indeed the garden appears celibate, as does the house, without womanly hands to plant and care for it. Here she is in place, – suggests lovely images of her personal accomplishments, as if civility were first conceived in such cares, and retired unwillingly, even to houses and chambers; something being taken from their elegancy and her nobleness by an undue absorption of her thoughts in household affairs. But there is a fitness in her association with flowers and sweet herbs, as with social hospitalities, showing her affinities with the magical and medical, as if she were the plant All-Heal, and mother of comforts and spices. Once the herb garden was a necessary part of every homestead; every country house had one well stocked, and there was a matron inside skilled in their secret virtues, having the knowledge of how her
"Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Have their acquaintance there,"
her memory running back to the old country from whence they first came, and of which they retained the fragrance. Are not their names refreshing? with the superstitions concerning the sign under which they were to be gathered, the quaint spellings; – mint, roses, fennel, coriander, sweet-cicely, celandine, summer savory, smellage, rosemary, dill, caraway, lavender, tanzy, thyme, balm, myrrh; these and many more, and all good for many an ail; sage, too, sovereign sage, best of all – excellent for longevity – of which to-day's stock seems running low, – for
"Why should man die? so doth the sentence say,
When sage grows in his garden day by day?"
This persuasion that the things near us, and under our feet, stand in that relationship from some natural affinity they have to our welfare, appears to be most firmly rooted with respect to the medical herbs, whether growing wild in the fields and woods, or about the old homesteads, though the names of most of them are now forgotten. A slight reference to the herbals and receipt books of the last century would show the good uses to which they were applied, as that the virtues of common sense are also disowned, and oftentimes trodden under foot. Certainly, they are less esteemed than formerly, being superseded, for the most part, by drugs less efficacious because less related geographically to our flesh, and not finding acquaintance therewith. Doubtless many superstitions were cherished about them in ancient heads, yet all helpful to the cure. The sweet fennel had its place in the rural garden, and was valued, not as a spice merely, but as a sacred seed, associated with worship, sprigs of it, as of caraway and dill, being taken to the pews, for appetizing the service. So the balm and rue had their sacredness. Pliny commends these natives to every housekeeper. "A good housewife," he says, "goes to her herb garden, instead of a spice shop, for seasonings, and thus preserves the health of her family, by saving her purse." So the poet sends her there, too, for spouse-keeping.
"When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep,
A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep,
She odorous herbs and flowers beneath him spread,
As the most soft and sweetest bed,
Not her own lap would more have charmed his head."
The last two centuries have added several plants of eminent virtues to the products of the orchard and garden. The cucumber, the potato, sweet corn, the melon, are the principal acquisitions, especially the last named, for that line of Marvell's —
"Stumbling on melons as I pass,"
must be taken rhetorically, since Evelyn informs us, this fruit had but just been introduced into England from Spain, in the poet's time, and the others but a little before. He says, "I myself remember when an ordinary melon would have sold for five or six shillings. 'Tis a fruit not only superior to all of the gourd kind, but paragon with the noblest of the garden." And of the cucumber, "This fruit, now so universally eaten, was accounted little better than poison within my memory." Columella shows some good ones growing in the Roman gardens: —
"The crooked cucumber, the pregnant gourd,
Sometimes from arbors pendant, and sometimes
Snake-like, through the cold shades of grass they creep,
And from the summer's sun a shelter seek."
Whittier has sung our sweet corn, as Marvell the melon for Old England.