Mary Elizabeth Coleridge: A Gardener’s Poet in September’s Embrace

September 23, 1861

Dearest garden loves, as autumn's gentle touch begins to paint our gardens in shades of amber and gold, we find ourselves drawn to contemplate the poetic nature of this transitional season.

It seems most fitting that on this day, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, that most observant chronicler of nature's subtle transformations, made her entrance into our world. What a wonderful day to be born.

Known to her readers under the mysterious pen name Anodos (a Greek word meaning "pathless" or "wandering upward"), Coleridge possessed that rare gift of capturing the garden's most fleeting moments in verse.

As the great-grandniece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, she carried forward her family's legacy of literary excellence while cultivating her own unique voice.

For those of us who tend to our gardens with devotion, her poem September resonates with particular poignancy, capturing that bittersweet moment when summer's vibrant display begins to fade:

Now every day the bracken browner grows,
Even the purple stars
Of clematis, that shone about the bars,
Grow browner; and the little autumn rose
Dons, for her rosy gown,
Sad weeds of brown.

How many of us have witnessed this very transformation in our own gardens?

The clematis, those "purple stars" that so valiantly climbed our trellises through summer, now surrender to autumn's earthen palette.

Yet Coleridge's gardener's eye extends beyond mere observation to capture the delicate dance between flora and fauna:

Now falls the eve; and ere the morning sun,
Many a flower her sweet life will have lost,
Slain by the bitter frost,
Who slays the butterflies also, one by one,
The tiny beasts
That go about their business and their feasts.

For those seeking joy amid autumn's melancholy, Coleridge offers us Gibberish, a whimsical celebration of garden enchantment:

Many a flower have I seen blossom,
Many a bird for me will sing.
Never heard I so sweet a singer,
Never saw I so fair a thing.
She is a bird, a bird that blossoms,
She is a flower, a flower that sings;
And I a flower when I behold her,
And when I hear her, I have wings.

As we tend to our autumn gardens, deadheading the last roses and preparing our beds for winter's slumber, let us carry forward Coleridge's gift for finding magic in the changing seasons.

For is that not what we gardeners do best - nurture beauty even as nature prepares for rest?