My Year With Proust - Day 29

   "We stopped for a moment by the fence.  Lilac-time was nearly over; some of the trees still thrust aloft, in tall purple chandeliers, their tiny balls of blossom, but in many places among their foliage where, only a week before, they had still been breaking in waves of fragrant foam, these were now spent and shrivelled and discoloured, a hollow scum, dry and scentless.  My grandfather pointed out to my father in what respects the appearance of the place was still the same, and how far it had altered since the walk that he had taken with old M. Swann on the day of his wife's death; and he seized the opportunity to tell us, once again, the story of that walk.

   In front of us a path bordered with nasturtiums rose in the fall glare of the sun towards the house.  But to our right the park stretched away into the distance, on level ground.  Overshadowed by the tall trees which stood close around it, an 'ornamental war' had been constructed by Swann's parents; but, even in his most artificial creations, nature is the material upon which man has to work; certain spots will persist in remaining surrounded by the vassals of their own especial sovereignty, and will raise their immemorial standards among all the 'laid-out' scenery of a park, just as they would have done far from any human interference, in a solitude which must everywhere return to engulf them, springing up out of the necessities of their exposed position, and superimposing itself upon the world of man's hands.  And so it was that, at the foot of the path which led down to this artificial lake, there might be seen, in its two tiers woven of trailing forget-me-nots below and of periwinkle above, the natural, delicate, blue garland which binds the luminous, shadowed brows of water-nymphs; while the iris, its swords sweeping every way in regal profusion, stretched out over agrimony and water-growing king-cups the lilied sceptres, tattered glories of yellow and purple, of the kingdom of the lake."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 143-144

I will have more to say about this, especially in relation to my own conflicted view of nature, but mainly I just think this is a wonderful passage - and it sets up an even more beautiful section.