But Its Gardens Are The Delight, The Delight And The Pride Of
Damascus.
They are not the formal parterres which you might expect
from the Oriental taste; they rather bring back to your mind the
memory of some dark old shrubbery in our northern isle, that has
been charmingly un - "kept up" for many and many a day.
When you
see a rich wilderness of wood in decent England, it is like enough
that you see it with some soft regrets. The puzzled old woman at
the lodge can give small account of "the family." She thinks it is
"Italy" that has made the whole circle of her world so gloomy and
sad. You avoid the house in lively dread of a lone housekeeper,
but you make your way on by the stables; you remember that gable
with all its neatly nailed trophies of fitchets and hawks and owls,
now slowly falling to pieces; you remember that stable, and that -
but the doors are all fastened that used to be standing ajar, the
paint of things painted is blistered and cracked, grass grows in
the yard; just there, in October mornings, the keeper would wait
with the dogs and the guns - no keeper now; you hurry away, and gain
the small wicket that used to open to the touch of a lightsome
hand - it is fastened with a padlock (the only new looking thing),
and is stained with thick, green damp; you climb it, and bury
yourself in the deep shade, and strive but lazily with the tangling
briars, and stop for long minutes to judge and determine whether
you will creep beneath the long boughs and make them your archway,
or whether perhaps you will lift your heel and tread them down
under foot. Long doubt, and scarcely to be ended till you wake
from the memory of those days when the path was clear, and chase
that phantom of a muslin sleeve that once weighed warm upon your
arm.
Wild as that, the nighest woodland of a deserted home in England,
but without its sweet sadness, is the sumptuous garden of Damascus.
Forest trees, tall and stately enough if you could see their lofty
crests, yet lead a tussling life of it below, with their branches
struggling against strong numbers of bushes and wilful shrubs. The
shade upon the earth is black as night. High, high above your
head, and on every side all down to the ground, the thicket is
hemmed in and choked up by the interlacing boughs that droop with
the weight of roses, and load the slow air with their damask
breath. {45} There are no other flowers. Here and there, there
are patches of ground made clear from the cover, and these are
either carelessly planted with some common and useful vegetable, or
else are left free to the wayward ways of Nature, and bear rank
weeds, moist-looking and cool to the eyes, and freshening the sense
with their earthy and bitter fragrance. There is a lane opened
through the thicket, so broad in some places that you can pass
along side by side; in some so narrow (the shrubs are for ever
encroaching) that you ought, if you can, to go on the first and
hold back the bough of the rose-tree. And through this wilderness
there tumbles a loud rushing stream, which is halted at last in the
lowest corner of the garden, and there tossed up in a fountain by
the side of the simple alcove. This is all.
Never for an instant will the people of Damascus attempt to
separate the idea of bliss from these wild gardens and rushing
waters. Even where your best affections are concerned, and you,
prudent preachers, "hold hard" and turn aside when they come near
the mysteries of the happy state, and we (prudent preachers too),
we will hush our voices, and never reveal to finite beings the joys
of the "earthly paradise."
CHAPTER XXVIII - PASS OF THE LEBANON
"The ruins of Baalbec!" Shall I scatter the vague, solemn thoughts
and all the airy phantasies which gather together when once those
words are spoken, that I may give you instead tall columns and
measurements true, and phrases built with ink? No, no; the
glorious sounds shall still float on as of yore, and still hold
fast upon your brain with their own dim and infinite meaning.
Come! Baalbec is over; I got "rather well" out of that.
The path by which I crossed the Lebanon is like, I think, in its
features to one which you must know, namely, that of the Foorca in
the Bernese Oberland. For a great part of the way I toiled rather
painfully through the dazzling snow, but the labour of ascending
added to the excitement with which I looked for the summit of the
pass. The time came. There was a minute in the which I saw
nothing but the steep, white shoulder of the mountain, and there
was another minute, and that the next, which showed me a nether
heaven of fleecy clouds that floated along far down in the air
beneath me, and showed me beyond the breadth of all Syria west of
the Lebanon. But chiefly I clung with my eyes to the dim,
steadfast line of the sea which closed my utmost view. I had grown
well used of late to the people and the scenes of forlorn Asia -
well used to tombs and ruins, to silent cities and deserted plains,
to tranquil men and women sadly veiled; and now that I saw the even
plain of the sea, I leapt with an easy leap to its yonder shores,
and saw all the kingdoms of the West in that fair path that could
lead me from out of this silent land straight on into shrill
Marseilles, or round by the pillars of Hercules to the crash and
roar of London. My place upon this dividing barrier was as a man's
puzzling station in eternity, between the birthless past and the
future that has no end.
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