THE GARDENS IN STARLIGHT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20338, 21 February 1928, Page 6

THE GARDENS IN STARLIGHT.

Written for the Otago Daily Times. By R.J. I sat last night on the terraced hillside, which, facing the north-east, overlooks the Botanic Gardens. Below green lawns, neat paths, and scattered flower beds, enclosed by trees and hedgerows, lay tranced and breathless in the witching of the night. 0, Brothers • Grimm! O, Madame D’Anois! 0, Sultana Scheherazade! O, Merlin! Why did you die? What have we done that all the gold and jewels of Fairyland should have been taken from ns by ruthless and unimaginative philosophers. What ' fairer setting for the gambols and frolics of the good little people—the brownies, the leprechauns, the witches, the pixies, the genii, and the elves —could be found than the public gardens bv starlight? How easy to recall those delicious imaginings of childhood when beauty and peace and enchantment reign supreme? It was a beautiful midsummer night, though scarcely dark —rather a faint dusk—“ a languid sky sleeping m heaven.” The interfluent light of morning and evening seemed to have met on the one wav, and all about the watohful sky silver star-flowers filled the soft blue gloom. There in the near distance, in dreams reposed,” the white-walled glasshouses with their glistening panes, _ glimmered like clusters of vast pearls-in the confusion of dark and shadowy green. Silence and odorous dimness, like ghosts, had taken complete possession. - Grass plots and flower beds smiled beneath the starry heavens, and the shadowy outlines of tall trees stood out, “ conscious of the conscious sky.” , , , Flowers of every kind, sleeping in the evening’s dew and balm, shed from their drooping heads and half-closed petals a peace and quiet that went right to the”’ . heart. . Even the old iron cannon, beneath the trees, grim relic of war and bloodshed, but still shining dully despite the suns and rains of many years, wore a face of rest like one who, blessing all things is himself blest. The empty seats on the terraces, / the winding pathways, the lagoon, and the moon-white fountain, which seemed forever to stir and talk the dark and murmuring mysteries ot creeper and shrub and tree, and all the pale and quiet statues that the moonlight sought out, indeed all things, were half enshrouded in some bright yet filmy i dream. . . , . There was a soul that night in ©verythin w within those still and beautiful grounds. The Snirit of the Stars could almost he seen gliding about on noiseless r. wings, his ardours filling all things with I lite. The flowers, their petals close shut, he touched in passing, and the sweet breath of each, ascending into the air, perfumed the starrv stillness, climbing the vaulted heavens like incense at evening prayer. As if in pleasure, the trees, the shimmering water, and even the grim old cannon and the vacant seats, seemed to stir, and a great new joy was born into the %vorld. The softest of winds breathed low and scented over the whole scene, and heaven and earth, and all things were iust for a time embraced in a host of mingling sympathies. It' required but the least imagination to sense strange and lovely arabesques and idylls against that background of enchantment. And as I sat there the mystery of the night grew deeper and all-enveloping, and I yearned towards those distant stars, quivered at the touch of the balmy breeze and sighed to feel beneath my hands the dewy softness of dark green turf and sleeping flowers. But then a saddening thought! Millions of flowers and blades of grass like these had flushed in the noondav warmth and slept beneath the quiet sky, “ twined about the year’s fastrunning wheel,” only, like dew at dawn, to droop and faint and fade away. Hut is not that how all things end, and is a flower the less beautiful because it must die? Still millions of flowers for the rest of time shall incense the endless hours, for, , . . There is no true death. " What seems to blight the green earth like a curse, Is like a shade that briefly fluttereth, God thrown upon the luminous universe To dusk the too great splendour. Then I awoke, and shivering ever so little, turned my face towards the city s lights, where life seems almost burnt away in one long dream; where, mothlike, we aspire to the white ethereal glow of fame and vain desire, pausing only now and then to sigh into the wide airs emptiness and dream of some new life m which the ghosts of hopes and ideals, long since dead, may some day awaken and expand into something fairer, purer, and fuller.