Matthew Arnold is peculiar among the poets, I think, for
his emphasis on scent. How he loved the lime-tree ! though that is not the species of the famous tree dedicated to his memory. The fact that he often refers to garden flowers almost as if they were wild should make doubly charming the plot that is to chronicle his preferences. What a nostalgia for scent in the famous verse in Thyrsis that we may put below Shakespeare's list in The Winter's Tale and just below Milton's I It happens to fit into the present date exactly.
" Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go ? Soon will the -high Midsummer pomps come on, Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, Sweet-William with his homely 'cottage-smell;
And stocks in fragrant blow ; Roses that down the alleys shine afar, And open; jasmine-muffled lattices,
And groups under. the dreaming garden-tress, And the full moon, and the white..evening-star."
* • * * *
Previous page
