Gualtherus Blok, Agneta Blok’s Vyver-Hof (1702)

Translated by Dr. C.L. (Roek) Vermeulen

• 1 Agneta, I’d like to remember the entertainments

• 2 with which you delighted my mind and always set it on fire,

• 3 and tirelessly provided beautiful and rich grounds

• 4 for praising you by means of the famous Vyver-Hof.

• 5 Here you most deliciously stroke and whet our senses

• 6 through art and labour, to love nature perfectly.

• 7 The fruit that the East considers it noblest nectar

• 8 and that the West first brought us from its lap,

• 9 whose pleasing scent fills the biggest halls,

• 10 whose beautiful appearance, which the brush is unable to copy,

• 11 delights the curious eye, is that exotic crop

• 12 flowering in winter, the golden-yellow pineapple;

• 13 its taste surpasses peaches from the best gardens,

• 14 its juice the sweetest muscatel wine.

• 15 Whether I praise the cereus here or the euphorbium,

• 16 naming its various leaves, its species, the places,

• 17 whether this one reached you from Asia

• 18 and that one originated from Africa,

• 19 while America grew the third one—

• 20 its green will never be depicted on my field of letters

• 21 as long as you, through the art of your watercolours

• 22 make nature live again, keeping it from dying.

• 23 One should not paint a flower [even] with the most beautiful hand,

• 24 Tyrian purple is too dull compared to the amaranth—

• 25 which laughs at carmine and through the sun’s rays

• 26 changes its glow, dazzles the eye and keeps it wandering.

• 27 May the amazing passion flower, which shows itself for a single day,

• 28 and the pig-sty daisy be recreated and crowned by the painter’s brush,

• 29 together with a thousand others that we will praise most highly,

• 30 of which you remain Flora, queen of flowers.

• 31 Ancient Cilicia may boast of its saffron,

• 32 but let it see a different/another field of these flowers here,

• 33 and industrious Flora diligently harvesting and collecting

• 34 those yellow dyes to cure the body.

• 35 Regale us with a feast of ambrosia

• 36 and stimulate the spirit with clove wine.

• 37 The scents of jasmine and myrtle fade away;

• 38 orange nor lemon can ever enchant us so,

• 39 and even the oleander, no matter how delicious its smell and great its beauty,

• 40 cedes to the scarlet, to pomegranate blossom.