Oh! said she, I heard you before, but I could not immediately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say ‘Yes,’ that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have, therefore made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all--and now despise me if you dare. Indeed I do not dare.
Come away, come away, Death,And in sad cypress let me be laid;Fly away, fly away, breath,I am slain by a fair cruel maid.My shroud of white stuck all with yew, O prepare it!My part of death no one so true did share it.Not a flower, not a flower sweet,On my black coffin let there be strewn:Not a friend, not a friend greetMy poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.A thousand thousand sighs to save, lay me O whereSad true lover never find my grave, to weep there!
Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple, black cat's ears in the sun, indigo shadow, and the bleeding hearts, so female in shape it was a surprise they'd not long since been rooted out. There is something subversive about this garden of Serena's, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.