The Pyncheon Garden

With poetry it was rather better. He delighted in the swell and
subsidence of the rhythm, and the happily recurring rhyme. Nor was
Clifford incapable of feeling the sentiment of poetry,--not, perhaps,
where it was highest or deepest, but where it was most flitting and
ethereal. It was impossible to foretell in what exquisite verse the
awakening spell might lurk; but, on raising her eyes from the page to
Clifford's face, Phoebe would be made aware, by the light breaking
through it, that a more delicate intelligence than her own had caught a
lambent flame from what she read. One glow of this kind, however, was
often the precursor of gloom for many hours afterward; because, when
the glow left him, he seemed conscious of a missing sense and power,
and groped about for them, as if a blind man should go seeking his lost
eyesight.

It pleased him more, and was better for his inward welfare, that Phoebe
should talk, and make passing occurrences vivid to his mind by her
accompanying description and remarks. The life of the garden offered
topics enough for such discourse as suited Clifford best. He never
failed to inquire what flowers had bloomed since yesterday. His
feeling for flowers was very exquisite, and seemed not so much a taste
as an emotion; he was fond of sitting with one in his hand, intently
observing it, and looking from its petals into Phoebe's face, as if the
garden flower were the sister of the household maiden. Not merely was
there a delight in the flower's perfume, or pleasure in its beautiful
form, and the delicacy or brightness of its hue; but Clifford's
enjoyment was accompanied with a perception of life, character, and
individuality, that made him love these blossoms of the garden, as if
they were endowed with sentiment and intelligence. This affection and
sympathy for flowers is almost exclusively a woman's trait. Men, if
endowed with it by nature, soon lose, forget, and learn to despise it,
in their contact with coarser things than flowers. Clifford, too, had
long forgotten it; but found it again now, as he slowly revived from
the chill torpor of his life.