It can’t have escaped your notice that it is National Poetry Day today. Gardens, both real and imaginary have been an inspiration to poets since forever. Since we’re in autumn here’s one we all know.
“Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”
– John Keats, To Autumn
Rudyard Kipling in this these lines brings us back to earth with a reminder that gardens don’t just happen.
“Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ and sitting in the shade.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Complete Verse
