Kew Gardens
From the oval-shaped flower-bed there rose
perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or
tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip
red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of colour
raised upon the surface. The petals were voluminous enough
to be stirred by the summer breeze, and when they moved,
the red, blue and yellow lights passed one over the other,
staining an inch of the brown earth beneath with a spot of
the most intricate colour. The light fell either upon the
smooth, grey back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its
brown, circular veins, or falling into a raindrop, it expanded
with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of
water that one expected them to burst and disappear. Then
the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the
colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the
men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.
How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush chose
to hop, like a mechanical bird, in the shadow of the flowers,
with long pauses between one movement and the next;
instead of rambling vaguely the white butterflies danced one
above another, making with their white shifting flakes the
outline of a shattered marble column above the tallest
flowers; the glass roofs of the palm house shone as if a
whole market full of shiny green umbrellas had opened in
the sun; and in the drone of the aeroplane the voice of the
summer sky murmured its fierce soul.
Yellow and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all
these colours, men, women, and children were spotted for a
second upon the horizon, and then, seeing the breadth of
yellow that lay upon the grass, they wavered and sought
shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops of water in the
yellow and green atmosphere. But there was no silence; all
the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels
and changing their gear; like a vast nest of Chinese boxes all
of wrought steel turning ceaselessly one within another the
city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried aloud
and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours
into the air.
(Source: Virginia Woolf — adaptation.)