“.... the trees That whisper round a temple become soon Dear as the temple’s self.”
One indeed might add that without the trees there is no temple. I use trees here as symbolic of environment, but, literally speaking, it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of trees to one’s castle-in-Spain. Ancient trees have always brought distinction to their possessors. It is the old park and the avenues--the setting--that give many an English house its imposing significance. To cut down the trees would be like shaving the head of a beautiful woman.
So my castle-in-Spain must be almost lost amid miles of mysterious trees, surrounded on every side by haunted forests, the home of wood-demons and the wild boar and the hunting horn and the bearded robber and the maiden in distress; and, like lanes of silver trumpets, six avenues of lime-trees shall sweep up to its six drawbridges in the air.
Of course my castle would be fortified against a world which would naturally wish to rob me of my happiness. It would be armed to the teeth with quick-firing guns of the latest pattern, and these would be manned by Japanese gunners of the quaintest size and shape. I may say--in parenthesis--that my valets would not be Japanese, but English. Each nation has its own special gift to give us, and England still remains famous for its valets. I should need volumes in folio adequately to describe my castle-in-Spain, and at least three of them would be needed to tell about my garden. Ah, what a garden there would be in my castle-in-Spain! Perhaps, aside from other fancies which I should expect to indulge, there would only be three on which I would really set my heart:
(1) A garden. (2) A library. (3) A private chapel.
I should not hope, nor even could I wish, to be original in my garden; for man’s early desire of gardens had developed into a learned convoluted art even before Solomon wrote:
“A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. My plants are an orchard of pomegranate, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard, spikenard with saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices: A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon. Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.”