Carolina Chansons: Legends of the Low Country — Magnolia Gardens; Middleton Garden

A PROSE-POEM

In the spring when the first midges dance and warm days lure the last-year's butterfly, the scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker through the ivory smoke of the mosses.

Then the alligator leaves his winter ooze, and the widening "O" of the ripple which his gar-like nose makes, travels slowly across the sullen ponds, where the pendant gonfalons of the mosses kiss their imaginary duplicates, hanging head downward in the red water.

When the first frog honks with the bull-voiced trumpet of resurgent spring, the jasmine rings its little hawk-bells, golden harp notes through the forest; and the usurping wistaria assumes the purple, reigning imperial and alone, flaunting its _palidementum_ in a cascade of lilac amid the matrix of the mosses.

Its sleek, muscular vine-arms writhe round the clasped bodies of live oaks as if two lovers slept beneath a cloak, and the cloisonné pavilion of their dalliance drips a blue-glaze of shadows overhead.

Underneath this motley canopy of gray and blue, lush with the early tenderness of leaves, the pink azaleas open light-shy eyes like pupils of albinos, sloughing off delicate pods that smoulder, when the wind blows, live coals among the gray of furnace ashes.

Here are magenta carpets fit for leprechauns, when crescent moons glimmer upon the ocher ponds, and the slow fireflies light their phantom lanterns, weaving to and fro about the ivory-orange marble of the tomb.

Each April day brings opalescent waves of birds that dart like living brands about the aisles to light the flower lamps; nonpareils, orioles, and hummingbirds, a mist of speed upon their wings, while the blue heron stands one-leggéd by the ponds, watching the garden till it seethes and flames with colors from the cloaks of mandarins.

High in the ancient forest the magnolias burn the perfect alban lucence of their lamps; white are their ivory cups like priestly linen, and fragrant with the tang of foreign citrons.

An esoteric, mirrored swan slides by like Cleopatra's barge, while drums of color beaten by a maniac blend with old tints of Leonardo's dreams, colors that God might see if his own lightning blasted out his eyes.

This march of color chants a strange barbaric fitness of dithyrambic chords, and moves processional across the days like some encarnadined durbar, where a huge Ethiopian eunuch in red moon-shaped slippers and an orange turban walks with a glittering scimetar, leading a brace of sleepy leopards drugged and golden eyed; the caparisoned elephants swing down a latticed street; silk shawls hang from balconies, brushing the domed gilt of howdahs; and ruby-roped, the maharajahs sway behind the mahout with his peavey-goad.

The stark denial of the blue-ribbed sky looks down upon this garden, where the wantonness of earth is flaunted in the spring against the face of heaven's void sterility.

Here stolid faces look ashamed.

When the sun leans on boreal wings, there is a month that lovers walk here justified, while flower throats cry in vast choirs, "Glory to life!"

and the uplifted trumpets of vine tubas shout with noise of color set to notes of bloom.

MIDDLETON GARDEN

This is a garden where the Son of Heaven Well might walk, With all his dragon-broidered mandarins, To the plucked sound of tenor instruments, With peacocks, kites, and little red balloons, Mirrored with incense and rice-paper lights, And old bronze lanterns on the full moon nights, Upon the lacquered, porcelain-pink lagoons.

If cardinals in sun-blood robes were here To kiss the ring of gorgeous Borgia popes;

Or bold de Gama's loot from Malabar: Topaz and ruby, chrysolite and beryl, The golden idol with a thousand hands, And ropes of pearl;

They would seem lesser than these flowers are, Whose masculine magnificence makes riches pale.

And yet with all its oriental hue There is a touch of Holland, Of canals at Loo, Where Orange William planned a boxwood maze.

The house has Flemish curves upon its eaves;

Its doorways yearn for buckle-shoed young bloods, Smoking clay pipes, with lace a-droop from sleeves-- Moonlight on terraces is like a story told By sleepy link-boys 'round old sedan chairs In days when tulip bulbs were gold.

The faint, crisp rustle of magnolia leaves Rasps with the crackling scratch of old brocade, The low bird-voices ripple like the laugh Of Watteau beauties coiffured, with pomade;

Here ribboned dandies offered scented snuffs To other ghosts, beneath the giant trees-- Was that a flash of rose-flamingo stuffs-- Azaleas?

--was a sneeze blown down the breeze?

This terrace is a stage set by the years, Fit for the pageants of the centuries;

That fire-scarred ruin marks an act of tears-- Charm is more winsome coped with tragedies.

Here flaunted tilted hats and crinolines, Small parasols, hoopskirts, and bombazines, When turbaned slaves walked dykes in single file, And rice-fields made horizons, otherwhile.

All, all has passed, but change, Gnawed by the rat-like teeth of avid years, The masters, through the door, to mysteries Beyond blind panels 'mid the moss-scarved trees, Uncanny gates, where negroes faintly bold, At high noon in the tide of summer heat, Stand in the draught of tomb-air deathly cold That flows like glacial water 'round their feet.

H.

A.