Much may be said in favor of him who cultivates plants.The man of the pot is far more humane than he of the scissors.We watch with delight his concern about water and sunshine, his feuds with parasites, his horror of frosts, his anxiety when the buds come slowly, his rapture when the leaves attain their lustre.In the East the art of floriculture is a very ancient one, and the loves of a poet and his favorite plant have often been recorded in story and song.
With the development of ceramics during the Tang and Sung dynasties we hear of wonderful receptacles made to hold plants, not pots, but jewelled palaces.A special attendant was detailed to wait upon each flower and to wash its leaves with soft brushes made of rabbit hair.It has been written ["Pingtse", by Yuenchunlang]
that the peony should be bathed by a handsome maiden in full costume, that a winter-plum should be watered by a pale, slender monk.In Japan, one of the most popular of the No-dances, the Hachinoki, composed during the Ashikaga period, is based upon the story of an impoverished knight, who, on a freezing night, in lack of fuel for a fire, cuts his cherished plants in order to entertain a wandering friar.The friar is in reality no other than Hojo-Tokiyori, the Haroun-Al-Raschid of our tales, and the sacrifice is not without its reward.This opera never fails to draw tears from a Tokio audience even to-day.
Great precautions were taken for the preservation of delicate blossoms.Emperor Huensung, of the Tang Dynasty, hung tiny golden bells on the branches in his garden to keep off the birds.He it was who went off in the springtime with his court musicians to gladden the flowers with soft music.
A quaint tablet, which tradition ascribes to Yoshitsune, the hero of our Arthurian legends, is still extant in one of the Japanese monasteries [Sumadera, near Kobe].It is a notice put up for the protection of a certain wonderful plum-tree, and appeals to us with the grim humour of a warlike age.After referring to the beauty of the blossoms, the inscription says: "Whoever cuts a single branch of this tree shall forfeit a finger therefor." Would that such laws could be enforced nowadays against those who wantonly destroy flowers and mutilate objects of art!
Yet even in the case of pot flowers we are inclined to suspect the selfishness of man.Why take the plants from their homes and ask them to bloom mid strange surroundings? Is it not like asking the birds to sing and mate cooped up in cages?
Who knows but that the orchids feel stifled by the artificial heat in your conservatories and hopelessly long for a glimpse of their own Southern skies?
The ideal lover of flowers is he who visits them in their native haunts, like Taoyuenming [all celebrated Chinese poets and philosophers], who sat before a broken bamboo fence in converse with the wild chrysanthemum, or Linwosing, losing himself amid mysterious fragrance as he wandered in the twilight among the plum-blossoms of the Western Lake.
'Tis said that Chowmushih slept in a boat so that his dreams might mingle with those of the lotus.It was the same spirit which moved the Empress Komio, one of our most renowned Nara sovereigns, as she sang: "If I pluck thee, my hand will defile thee, O flower! Standing in the meadows as thou art, I offer thee to the Buddhas of the past, of the present, of the future."However, let us not be too sentimental.Let us be less luxurious but more magnificent.Said Laotse: "Heaven and earth are pitiless." Said Kobodaishi: "Flow, flow, flow, flow, the current of life is ever onward.Die, die, die, die, death comes to all."Destruction faces us wherever we turn.Destruction below and above, destruction behind and before.Change is the only Eternal,--why not as welcome Death as Life? They are but counterparts one of the other,--The Night and Day of Brahma.
Through the disintegration of the old, re-creation becomes possible.We have worshipped Death, the relentless goddess of mercy, under many different names.It was the shadow of the All-devouring that the Gheburs greeted in the fire.It is the icy purism of the sword-soul before which Shinto-Japan prostrates herself even to-day.The mystic fire consumes our weakness, the sacred sword cleaves the bondage of desire.From our ashes springs the phoenix of celestial hope, out of the freedom comes a higher realisation of manhood.
Why not destroy flowers if thereby we can evolve new forms ennobling the world idea? We only ask them to join in our sacrifice to the beautiful.We shall atone for the deed by consecrating ourselves to Purity and Simplicity.Thus reasoned the tea-masters when they established the Cult of Flowers.
Anyone acquainted with the ways of our tea- and flower-masters must have noticed the religious veneration with which they regard flowers.They do not cull at random, but carefully select each branch or spray with an eye to the artistic composition they have in mind.They would be ashamed should they chance to cut more than were absolutely necessary.It may be remarked in this connection that they always associate the leaves, if there be any, with the flower, for the object is to present the whole beauty of plant life.In this respect, as in many others, their method differs from that pursued in Western countries.Here we are apt to see only the flower stems, heads as it were, without body, stuck promiscuously into a vase.
