June
Rose leaves and buds, the season’s flowers,
Scenting afresh the summer hours,
The ruddy morn, the evening’s close,
Day’s labors long and night’s repose.
Berries
Tuesday, 1.
Rise with the sun, if you would keep the commandments. The sleep you get before midnight goes to virtue; after sunrise, to vice. “It is wise,” says Aristotle, “to be up before daybreak, for such habit contributes to health, wealth, and wisdom.” If this virtue, commended alike by antiquity and by our sense of self-respect, has fallen into discredit in modern times, it was practised by our forefathers and bore its fruits. They
“With much shorter and far sweeter sleep content,
Vigorous and fresh about their labors went.”
“He that in the morning hath heard the voice of virtue,” says Confucius, “may die at night.” And it were virtuous to rise early during our June mornings to breakfast on strawberries with the robins, or what were as good, partake of Leigh Hunt’s delicious Essay on these berries. One tastes them from his potted pages. And his very quotations are palatable.
“My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holburn,
I saw good strawberries in your garden there;
I pray you send for some of them.”
An ancient may read “Concord” instead of “my Lord of Ely’s” gardens, and enjoy the sight moreover of his grandson’s vermilioned fingers while picking them; the berries in no wise inferior to his Lordship’s in flavor or color, and far larger in size,—that Yankee superstition. But one tastes none like the wild ones plucked fresh from the meadows of his native place, while the dews sparkled in the grasses, and the bobolink sought to decoy him from her nest there when he approached it. The lay lingers in the ear still:—
“A single note, so sweet and low,
Like a full heart’s overflow,
Forms the prelude,—but the strain
Gives us no sweet tone again;
For the wild and saucy song
Leaps and skips the notes among
With such quick and sportive play,
Ne’er was merrier, madder lay.”
Herrick dished his with fresh cream from his “little buttery”:—
“You see the cream but naked is,
Nor dances in the eye
Without a strawberry,
Or some fine tincture like to this
Which draws the sight thereto.”
So Milton’s Eve in Eden,—
“From many a berry and from sweet kernels pressed,
She tempered dulcet creams.”
And Aratus, whom St. Paul quotes concerning the gods, calls the berries in aid in describing the roseate cheek of health:—
“Fair flesh like snow with vermilion mixed,”
a line that took Goethe’s fancy when composing his Theory of Colors.
Randolph, too, Ben Jonson’s young friend, rides out of London with “worthy Stafford” in quest of some,—
“Come, spur away,
I have no patience for a longer stay;
But I must go down
And leave the changeable air of this great town.
I will the country see,
Where old simplicity,
Though hid in gray,
Doth look more gay
Than foppery in plush and scarlet clad;
Farewell ye city wits that are
Almost at city war,—
’Tis time that I grew wise when all the world is mad.
“Here from the tree
We’ll cherries pluck, and pick the strawberry;
And every day
Go see the wholesome girls make hay,
Whose brown hath lovelier grace
Than any painted face
That I do know
Hyde Park can show.
“Then full, we’ll seek a shade,
And hear what music’s made;
How Philomel
Her tale doth tell,
And how the other birds do fill the choir,
The thrush and blackbird lend their throats,
Warbling melodious notes,
We will all sports enjoy that others do desire.”
The strawberry, it appears, was not restored to gardens till within a century or two back. Evelyn mentions “planting them out of the woods.” I do not find it mentioned as a cultivated plant in the Greek or Roman rural authors. Phillips, in his History of Fruits, gives this pleasant account of the origin of its name. That of “an ancient practice of children threading the wild berries upon straws of grass,” somewhat as rude country boys thread birds’ egg-shells like beads, as ornaments for their mirrors. He says that this is still a custom in parts of England where they abound, and that so many “straws of berries” are sold for a penny,—a more picturesque style of marketing than in pottles, or boxes. Evelyn mentions the kinds common in his time: Common Wood, English, American, or Virginia, Polona, White, Ivy Red, the Green, and Scarlet.
Culpepper, in his British Herbal, says: “This plant is so well known that it needs no description. It grows in woods and is planted in gardens. It flowers in May; the fruit ripens soon after. Venus owns the herb. The fruit, when green, is cool and dry; but when ripe, cool and moist.” He gives a list of its medical virtues, among which, he says, “the water of the berries, carefully distilled, is a remedy and cordial in the panting and beating of the heart.” It were almost worth having this trouble to be cured by his strawberry cordials.
He describes the raspberry, also called thimbleberry, and ascribes to it similar medical virtues.
Of bilberries, he says there are two sorts common in England,—the black and red. The red bilberry he calls “whortleberry,” and says: “The black groweth in forests, on the heath, and such like barren places. The red grows in the north parts of this land, as Lancashire, Yorkshire, etc., flowers in March and April, the fruit ripening in July and August.” “Both are under the dominion of Jupiter,” and, if we may believe him, are very virtuous, it being “a pity they are used no more in physic than they are.” In August we gather as good in
OUR BLUEBERRY SWAMP.
“Orange groves mid-tropic lie,
Festal for the Spaniard’s eye,
And the red pomegranate grows
Where the luscious southwest blows;
Myrrh and spikenard in the East
Multiply the Persian’s feast,
And our northern wilderness
Boasts its fruits our lips to bless.
Wouldst enjoy a magic sight,
And so heal vexation’s spite?
Hasten to my blueberry swamp,—
Green o’erhead the wild bird’s camp;
Here in thickets bending low,
Thickly piled the blueberries grow,
Freely spent on youth and maid,
In the deep swamp’s cooling shade,
Pluck the clusters plump and full,
Handful after handful pull!
Choose which path, the fruitage hangs,—
Fear no more the griping fangs
Of the garden’s spaded stuff,—
This is healthy, done enough.
Pull away! the afternoon
Dies beyond the meadow soon.
Art thou a good citizen?
Move into a blueberry fen;
Here are leisure, wealth, and ease,
Sure thy taste and thought to please,
Drugged with nature’s spicy tunes,
Hummed upon the summer noons.
“Rich is he that asks no more
Than of blueberries a store,
Who can snatch the clusters off,
Pleased with himself and them enough.
Fame?—the chickadee is calling;—
Love?—the fat pine cones are falling;
Heaven?—the berries in the air,—
Eternity—their juice so rare.
And if thy sorrows will not fly,
Then get thee down and softly die.
In the eddy of the breeze,
Leave the world beneath those trees,
And the purple runnel’s tune
Melodize thy mossy swoon.”
W. E. Channing.