Ruskin at the Gate of the Garden of Eden

John Ruskin · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages

Two pages carrying one passage from Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, the second lecture — "Lilies: Of Queens' Gardens" — paragraph 95, with every scriptural allusion identified in the footnotes.

The passage is addressed directly to the reader as a question: who is it, do you think, who stands at the gate of this sweeter garden, alone, waiting for you? The answer is given by way of Mary Magdalene, who went down to her garden at dawn and found One waiting at the gate whom she supposed to be the gardener. Ruskin's point turns on where that figure is and is not to be looked for. He is never at the gate of the old garden where the fiery sword is set, and seeking him there all through the night is vain — but at the gate of this garden he waits always, ready to take your hand and go down to see whether the vine has flourished and the pomegranate budded. The imagery that follows is drawn straight from the Song of Solomon: the little tendrils of the vines guided by his hand, the pomegranate springing where he cast the sanguine seed, and troops of angel keepers waving the hungry birds away from the pathsides with their wings and calling to one another between the vineyard rows to take the little foxes that spoil the vines. The last sentence turns the whole thing into a reproach to the women he is lecturing: shall the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests among the happy greenwood of your land, and in your cities shall the stones cry out against you that they are the only pillows where the Son of Man can lay his head?

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