Stranica 84 [84]
JEG Ka ES RIVER BLANTÁTKON -BELT
Among all these pictures of memory, the one that most affects
the tender heart is the vision of lovely Evelyn Byrd, the eldest
daughter of the second William, whose gentle spirit seems to haunt
the garden yet. Her charm and beauty captivated not only the
colony, but England; at eighteen she was presented at court and
became the toast of the nobility. Tradition tells that she was wooed
and won by Charles Mordaunt, Lord Peterborough, but her father
broke off the match and brought her home to pine and die.
One thinks of her in slender, slowly-fading loveliness, wander¬
ing through the box-bordered paths in her flowered gown and high¬
heeled silken shoes, and wonders if her thoughts were those that
Amy Lowell has so poignantly expressed in ‘‘Patterns”’:
‘“T walk down the garden paths
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the garden paths
In my stiff brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jeweled fan
I, too, am a rare pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.
My dress is richly figured
And my train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes,
Not a softness anywhere about me.
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please
And I weep
So the beautiful Evelyn must have thought, one can fancy, as
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