The poetry of hops and flowers: Christopher Smart’s garden verses

April 11, 1722

Dearest reader,

On this day, the English poet Christopher Smart first greeted the world, though perhaps the world was not yet ready for a man of such curious brilliance.

Known to some by his mischievous pen name, “Mrs. Mary Midnight,” one cannot help but wonder what inspired such an audacious feminine disguise.

Was he mocking the conventions of his age, or was it merely that he found freedom in masquerade?

Whatever the motive, this early act of literary theater hinted at the fervent imagination that would both crown and undo him.

Alas, the back half of Christopher’s life was spent not in the serenity of gardens, but in madhouses and debtor’s prisons. Yet even confined, his mind roamed freely through Heaven and Nature. It was from within those cold walls that he penned his masterpiece, Jubilate Agno — “Rejoice in the Lamb.”

In that astonishing poem, he writes,

For the flowers are great blessings.
For there is a language of flowers.
For the flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.

Gardens and grace intertwined for him, each bloom a holy word, each petal a prayer. Who among us has not knelt before a flower, overcome by its silent sermon?

And let us not forget his faithful companion, the cat Jeoffry, whom Christopher immortalized in verse. While the world outside dismissed him as mad, Smart found in that feline a symbol of divine order and joyful obedience. Centuries later, Jeoffry inspires new admirers still — even a modern biography by Oliver Soden celebrates that whiskered muse.

One might ask: was Jeoffry the poet’s guardian, or his mirror?

Earlier in life, Christopher found inspiration in a different foliage — hops.

His 1752 poem, The Hop-Garden, stretches across an impressive 733 lines, instructing the reader how to cultivate those climbing vines. Part manual, part memoir, it is proof that horticulture and poetry share the same soil. He dedicates the latter half of the work to his dear friend Theophilus Wheeler, lost too soon at Christ College. Such tenderness lingers in every line, a vine entwining friendship and grief.

When storms threatened his imaginary harvest, he urged:

Haste then, ye peasants; pull the poles, the hops;
Where are the bins?
Run, run, ye nimble maids,
Move ev’ry muscle, ev’ry nerve extend,
To save our crop from ruin, and ourselves.

None other than Samuel Johnson, with his usual dry humor, declared that the poem proved “one could say a great deal about cabbage.”

Indeed, and hops, and cats, and Heaven itself! For the poet’s genius lay not in his sanity, but in his devotion to language, to creation, and to the unseen meaning nestled at the heart of all living things.

Christopher Smart died in London’s debtor’s prison in 1771, aged just 49.

Yet beyond those iron bars, his spirit still wanders through every garden where words and petals meet.

Tell me, dear reader — when next you speak to your flowers, will you not think of him?