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A Shakespeare Garden Stroll

Of all the blooms, I like the lily best.
Might you prefer a deep vermilion rose?
Well, each to earth some special good can give;
Let’s glean what naturally in season grows.

At dawn the tree tops whisk the milky moon,
And winking Mary-buds ope golden eyes;
Shall we go see the hawthorn sunrise pink,
Or will you slumber on contrariwise?

The darling buds of May smile on display
With cowslips, daisies pied and violets blue;
The pretty lady-smock in silver white
Abandons cuckoo shoots of yellow hue.

Near here reside dramatis personae:
Blithe Ariel favors galleries of goss,
And Cleopatra, mandragora plots,
While Adriana’s elm wears vine and moss.

There’s Desdemona weeping with her willow;
Fluellen has his jaunty leek set up;
Jack Falstaff gathers cabbage and potatoes;
Feste craves his ginger; Puck, an acorn cup.

Fair Perdita beds out a maiden garden,
Expending happy cultivated hours
In delicate design of virtuous wishes,
With hopes for tasty herbs and spicy flowers.

Hot lavender, mint, savory, marjoram,
Carnations, peonies, streaked gillyflors
Consolidate a customary garth
For classically judicious councilors.

Oh, for woodbine honeysuckle trumpets
That strew bucolic Arden bittersweet,
To nectarize our stroll this time of year
And bring joy in its train when next we meet.

But could I play and sing to holly wild,
With snowy flowrets hoisted high aloft,
I’d color jolly berries red in frost,
And conversation confidently soft.

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garth: a small yard and enclosed area outside

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Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others. 


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22 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Superlatives hardly do justice for such an august “Sonnetesque” (my word for an extended sonnet in beautiful iambic pentameter). The colorful extensive imaginings of flowers on display matched with personae and then including the cabbage and potatoes of Falstaff come from an amazing mind and treated my senses. Shakespeare would have been as entranced and enchanted, as I was.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Roy! There are two sonnets here, as well as allusions to plays; many readers recognize “darling buds of May” from Sonnet 18, but the concept and the vermilion rose come from Sonnet 98, “From you I have been absent in the spring.” I was absent from Shakespeare, but I have just journeyed back to England! Potatoes went there from the New World in Shakespeare’s time, and I think it’s Merry Wives of Windsor that set Falstaff to kitchen work for not paying his tavern bill.

      Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    I can’t resist poems about gardens, especially carefully tended gardens that are walled or gated, and filled with rare and unusual things.

    The language here is rich and scented, as one would expect in a garden of this nature. Just entering it is an olfactory experience. The line “At dawn the tree tops whisk the milky moon” is striking, just as is “To nectarize our stroll this time of year.” I can just hear the howls of rage from the mainstream workshops at that word “nectarize,” but it fits in perfectly with the atmosphere of the poem. The juxtaposition of two /con-/ words in the last line is a wonderful closing touch.

    The entire poem breathes Shakespeare, and Shakespeare’s England — a land much more abundantly richer in herbs and ferns and flowers and trees than it is today.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks so much, Joe. The first line you like was hinted by Romeo and Juliet, but “whisk the milky” is my very own view of trees and moon. And growing up with frequent tastes of honeysuckle in the back yard, of course places can be nectarized! So glad you find Shakespeare and his England in this stroll.

      Reply
  3. Paul A. Freeman

    Thank you for sharing your stroll around a Shakespeare Garden. Many a time I heard the voice of the Bard in this poem.

    Some of my favourite line was ‘…the tree tops whisk the milky moon…’ – what a great image.

    Thanks for the stroll.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      You’re very welcome, Paul. There are a few direct quotations from Shakespeare in the poem, but most allusions to the plays come through my re-acting. Happy you could hear the Bard’s voice!

      Reply
  4. Sally Cook

    Dear Margaret –
    As I traveled with you through your garden, I met so many plants I had not thought of since childhood ; and thank you for reminding me of them again; You took me back to those early summer sunlit evenings when my mother would read snippets of Shakespeare to us from a book called “The Listening Child” as we fell asleep.
    Mary buds and other things remained embedded in our memories – at least mine – always waiting just below the surface to be called up, as you have done.
    Thank you.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Sally, for letting me know why you like the stroll. I recall reading Charles and Mary Lamb’s “Tales from Shakespeare” starting in early childhood. The Lambs were careful to include direct quotes from each play, inspiring me to read through my mother’s Complete Plays when I reached high school age. It was an invaluable beautification of youthful education.

      Reply
  5. jd

    Lovely, Margaret, and one can’t ask more than to call back childhood’s heart as your
    poem has done for Sally. I would like to know what a “Mary bud” is. Is it a rose bud?

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      “Winking Mary-buds ope golden eyes” is a direct quote, from “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” which means that Mary-buds here must be marigolds. That’s one of the few remaining flower names that preserve the plant’s folk identity as belonging to Our Lady. At one time it was believed that God created all flowers as gifts for His mother, and many of them had names identifying them as part of her wardrobe or household. Thanks for your reading and comment, jd!

      Reply
  6. Daniel Kemper

    Quite an expansive garden; I quite enjoyed the surveying stroll. I particularly liked that there was another person there with whom the speaker engaged, not merely a fly-by. It’s also really quite something to see how evocative these mentions are– how much one didn’t realize one retained of the poetry to which so many refer. Finally, I love that it’s clearly a studied touch; that is, I know that it is because of scope and reference, but it doesn’t feel studied at all, just completely casual and natural.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Daniel. Shakespeare gardens themselves are studied works of art–not just beautiful gardens, but planned and planted in reference to growing things named by Shakespeare in his works. I did study for this lyric, trying to find flower or plant names from each category of plays and from the poems. I am so glad you are able to find the stroll a natural survey, with an interlocutor addressed in a personal manner.

      Reply
  7. Gigi Ryan

    Dear Margaret,

    Thank you for this bouquet of verses!

    The second is my favorite. I am partial to dawn. The image of the treetops whisking the moon and the May-buds opening their eyes is a sliver of Paradise to me.
    Gigi

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Gigi, thank you! Shakespeare planted these in the paradise of his works, probably remembering the flowering Warwickshire countryside where he came from.

      Reply
  8. Warren Burt Bonham

    I never know what to expect when one day it’s Nazi villains, another it’s Esther and today an amazing overview of the array of plants one might see on a garden stroll. Thanks as always for the captivating and very educational poetic effort!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Warren–I can always learn more of the poet’s craft by turning my hand to different topics, and I much appreciate readers who are willing to listen.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Brian, my sincere appreciation for your time and effort in reading and responding, as well as for praise of the poem’s beauty.

      Reply
  9. Jeff Eardley

    Margaret, oh how joyful it must be to stroll by “Woodbine, honeysuckle trumpets” This is a lovely poem. Thank you.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Jeff! The honeysuckle in my childhood memories are trumpet-shaped, and thus I suppose there must have been some where the young Shakespeare could have found them.

      Reply
  10. Gary Krauss

    Exquisite Margaret! It would be lovely to be there and read it again. Bravo!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Gary! Now that I’m in England, I find there is an ambitious attempt to recover plants Shakespeare knew. It’s “No Mow May,” leading to “Knee-High July.” At least in gardens surrounding homes or other buildings, the variety in flowering material was much reduced by the fashion of the trim English lawn. For some years, professional designers have been trying to do “re-wilding,” but this year the “No Mow May” plan is being promoted for public and large business landscapes, in the hope that smaller spaces may follow suit. As I said in the poem, “Let’s glean what naturally in season grows.”

      Reply

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