Page:The Bloom of Monticello (1926).pdf/19

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

fabricated at out feet, and the glorious sun rising as out of the distant water, just gilding the tops of the mountain, and giving life to all nature!"

Little wonder is it, that in bringing his fair-haired bride to this spot he chose to adorn it further for her coming. Months beforehand he had busied himself with plans for a shrubbery at the right side of the house, the details of which we find noted carefully in his pocket account book. In the garden in which the lovelorn bachelor saw his lady there must bloom in springtime, dogwood, lilac, wild cherry and jessamine, with trumpet flower and honeysuckle running wild. She must walk among the alder bushes, hardly taller than her outstretched hand, and pluck blossoms from the flowering amorpha, althea, clethra and climbing rose. Joy and sweet bride, cassio berry, barberry, haw, the Judas tree, ceanothus and chinquapin must bow beneath her touch. Violets, "Dim but sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes or Cytherea's breath" must grow in the grass on which she walked, and lilies and proud flags, purple clad, lift their heads to do her honor, with peonies and poppies, primroses, periwinkles and pale anemone in their train. The long summer sun, he knew too, would shine down on laughing larkspur and gilliflower, snapdragons and daisies, not so gay as she, and there would be pasque flowers, flowers-de-luce, sunflowers, goldilocks and mallows; while in winter the snows of Monticello would gleam in the moonlight on sentinel cedars, yew trees and juniper, with laurel, magnolia and holly, guarding her while she slept.

For the grounds in general he laid careful plans. "Cover the whole with grass. Intersperse jessamine, honeysuckle,

[8]