Added Value: Things found in books - Calendula Officinalis

A supplement to the Amateur gardening magazine dated 4th January,1936. Calendual Officinalis "Orange King" a popular variety of the the old Scotch Marigold. A single sheet with a poem written on the back;

Before the beginning of years,

There came to the making of man

Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;

Pleasure, with pain for leaven;

Summer, with flowers that fell;

Remembrance fallen from heaven,

And madness risen from hell;

Strength without hands to smite;

Love that endures for a breath;

Night, the shadow of light,

And life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand
fire, and the falling of tears,
and a measure of sliding sand
from under the feet of the years; 

And froth and drift of the sea; And dust of the laboring earth; And bodies of things to be in the houses of death and birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, and fashioned with loathing and love, with life before and after, and death below and above. For a day and a night and a morrow, that his strength might endure for a span, with travail and heavy sorrow, The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the south, they gathered as unto strife; They breathed upon his mouth, they filled his body with life; Eyesight and speech they wrought for the veils of the soul therein, a time for labor and thought, a time to serve and to sin; They gave him light in his ways, and love, and a space for delight; And beauty and length of days, and night, and sleep in the night.His speech is a burning fire; With his lips he travaileth; In his heart is a blind desire, in his eye foreknowledge of death; He weaves, and is clothed with derision; Sows, and he shall not reap; His life is a watch or a vision. Between a sleep and a sleep.

Chorus from 'Atalanta in Calydon' by Algernon Charles Swinburn (1837-1909) 


Found in The silent playmate a collection of doll stories. Published by Victor Gollancz, 1979.