Read it through once

The Nijō-in was kept in perfect order and repair; but the fact that it was no longer the main residence somehow or other gave it an air of abandonment and desolation. The gardens, however, were as delightful as ever. The red plum-blossom was at its best, and it seemed a pity that so much beauty and fragrance should be, one might almost say, wasted. He murmured to himself the lines: ‘To see the springtide to my old home I came, and found within it a rarer flower than any that on orchard twigs was hung!’