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Q ,
If I might see another spring
I’d listen to the daylight birds
That build their nests and pair and sing,
Nor wait for mateless nightingale;
I’d listen to the lusty herds,
The ewes with lambs as white as snow,
I’d find out music in the hail
And all the winds that blow.”
Indeed this spring the winds blew up into
a regular “whirly-wind” as the local eye-
witnesses expressed it. lVe had been rejoicing
in the giant elm in the park and leading the
children under it, gathering the soft rosy
blossoms that came before the leaves, and fancy-
ing dames in ruffs in Elizabeth’s time talking
of the Armada,and in the next century gentle-
men in long ringlets whispering liair-breadth
escapes from Sedgcmoor fight that raged the
other side of those far hills. But March had
hardly shown her face when a hum'caue arose
and wind and water chased all but the boldest
within doors. At 9 one morning anxious faces
pressed against the panes watched a moment
of unheard of fury in the blast and the giant
elm thundered to the ground. Awe came
over us as we watched the great root that
stood thirteen or fourteen feet in the air and
made a sheer wall above the pond which it had
created as it was wrcnched from the soil. It
was itiful to see the majestic bouglis being
lopt by degrees and carted away, and the little
children climbing in and out of its patient
branches, gathering wealth of fire-wood to last
for many a long day. How well that it was
too early for many little birds to be made
homeless; I could find none but perhaps some
shared the fate of the ravens in the tree in
Losel’s wood that XVhite tells of in his
Ilzlrtor of Srlbome, that would not be dis-
lodgcdv from their nest : “ The tree nodded to
its fall,” he says, “but still the darn sat on.
At last when it gave way the bird was flung
from her nest, and, though her parental affec-
tion deserved a better fate, was whipped down
by the twigs, which brought her dead to the
ground.” .
, Indeed, this hamlet, remote from railway
trains, is a spot dear to shybirds and boasts as
it is to the gipsies. How sure is the swoop of
that great white owl that fans the air as it sails
away down the field to the old canal and its
rushes. It is soothing to a lover of odd and
wild creatures to reflect that that bird with
eyes like a lake has a young family in an
unknown high part of our rambling home.
There is no need for you to start with nightly
terrors; that is not a poor deserted baby
wailing in the night wind; it is the little
owlets booting weirdly to one another, and all
unconscious that the baby's mother in the
house below has never heard such curious talk
before. ‘Ve are not too instructed here for
deep-set superstitions. The next village owns
a witch, and I have heard talk in ours of the
evil eye, and there is one gentle-hearted dame
to whom, not so long ago either, the maids
used to go for love philtres. If you looked
into her mysterious, deep-set, kindly old eyes
you would not wonder at her power. But
.
is itc of the spirit of the hamlet the boy there
seeps too soundly in rosy health for any
bodirig owl or “h ack evvet" to disturb his
inotlier‘s peace.
The country-folk themselves are shy of
strange life. It does not win their confidence
to protect that green snake which was sunning
itselfamong the pea-stalks. It is a harmless
one that could not hurt a child, and it only
“wiggles siniiously away, raising its pretty
head and twitcbiiig its forked tongue in wrat i
SPRIZV G 11115111 ORIES .
when you try to capture it, yet the villagers
count it an of the devil‘s brood and meet only
to be kil ed. The hedgehogs come sometimes
in the lane below and are a choice meal for the
gipsies, who tell me of them as they sit and
rest in the kitchen before they take their
babies down to be christened by a parson near
here who has zi knack of not frightening them
away. Look at that gipsy with her bonny
brown baby tied in a neat bundle at her waist :
she is as like as a )oitrait to Fred “’alker‘s
vagrant, with her g orious eyes and waves of
untamable, black, glossy hair, and all the
unconscious freedom of one who has “never
slept under :1 roof.”
But before March is over, spite of late
biting winds that have robbed us of our fruit
harvest, spring herself is with us. The great
elms and the little hedge-rows soon have their
film of faintest green that clings so tcndcrly to
the grave old branches. In the garden copse
where the beeches were golden in late
autumn, we can find the ground underfoot
alive with loveliness that passes spontaneously
from glory to glory. The great splashes of
gold and white and purple crocuscs are
followed by blue and pink-white violets that
lie on the turfy copse soil like a baby’s hand
on a ploughman’s. Side by side with the
priniroses that cover the font on Easter Day
and comfort the mothers who are reminded
of their babies that died and are safe, grow
great tufts of purple-red tuli is that are cut to
be the glory of the festival a tar. In between
the rock-work are the dark green leaves that
soon have sweet-scented narcissus nesting in
the middle or the earlier clumps that nod with
daffodils
“That come before the swallow dares
And take the winds of March with beauty."
This happy family in the copse that comes up
in such a tardy way and yet in suclfrecklcss
profusion, letting the wild hyacinth of the
woods with its blue bells and delicate frettcd
edges mix with the aristocratic purple coinin-
bine, folly’s child, and the proud tulip be
threaded in and out by the white flowers of the
wild garlic, is a natural entrance to a garden
meant to be the meeting-ground of the parish.
But the priniroses under the beeches are not
quite as thick and tufted as these under the
Scotch fir. ‘Vhat would the garden be without
that tree? Every season seems to hcightenits
beauty. The grey green young spring shoots
and the dark resinous cones nuke fresh notes
in the green harmony of branches which droop
and spray and cast flickering pencilled shadows
on the rough red stem at noon: yet in all its
grace the fir is never languid, and its scent has
the same stimulating force to the mind as the
scent of the Chrysanthemum, and a puritan
touch which stcadics the intoxicating odours
of the spring.
All beneath the fir and the ilcx and the bay
was a barren wildemess a year ago, but now it
is a sheet of blue forget-me-not, among which
the primroscs are nested and the periwinkle
trails hcr wreath. One day we hamcsscd the
donkey and went with baskets to that far
dingle on the side of the slope and dug care-
fully among the lovely moss and roots of the
wood and carried home the “ spikes of purple
orchises” and the blue-bells and the violets
and set them under the acacia and the leafy
mcdlar just breaking into large crumpled
innocent-faced blossoms ; howfull the branches
are of great green leaves, and how they seem
to stoop and stretch a moming shade for us
on the sunn lawn: they are ve " tough and
strong and 0 not break when trh little girl
357
with yellow hair swings and dances u on
them. In a few weeks tall foxgloves, w tile
and pink and purple, peer out from this flowery
nook at the carts and wagons and gipsy-vans
that pass by to the great world. The dark
stains on the pure colour inside the “glue of
bells," give a cast of thought to these delicate
flowers and a refinement of beauty that is all
the more queenly for the simple setting. As
Gerrard says, “foxglove groweth in barren
sandy grounds and almost everywhere,” and if
you have despaircd of any bed under the
trees, see what can be done with some good
foxglove seed.
But we need not look to gardens for beauty
in this witching time when every blade of
road-side grass is touched with magic, and the
rain when it comes inalrcs “even the cart-ruts
beautiful."
How the sunlight revels in that great may-
skirted meadow this warm afternoon, and
gilds the biittcrcups and daisies and the clover-
tlower and every bit of canary and coucli-
grass, of hare’s tail and meadow-fescue that
bend together under the waves of shadow as
only those wonderful grasses with their fairy
boties and merry tossing heads can. The
butterflies are come, and down below
“ . . . above the daisy tree,
Tlirougli the grasses
High o‘erhead the bumble bee
llums and passes."
while up in the air the birds
“ Make all the April woods
Merry with singing.
They shall go flying
‘Vith musical speeches
High overhead in the
Tops of the beeches.
In spite of our wisdom
And sensible talking,
“'e on our feet must go
Plodding and walking."
London folk think of grass in a lump, but
you have only to watch the may meadows not
to wonder at the thirty-seven heads under
which Miss Plues describes ilicm in her sweet,
old-fashioned book on Rumble: in Smrrlz of
U'z'lil Fluwcm.
Before we say good-bye to spring let us
peep at that cluster of blue wind-fiowers so
very cool and fresh under the tall rose-bushes,
all spotted with starry-white stamens and
buried in dark green leaves. It grows wild in
‘Vales, but it flourishes and comes up liardily
in a shady garden-bed. It is :1 near cousin of
the rare purple pasque anemone which Fitz-
gerald says grows wild on the Fleam-dyke,
near Cam ridge, and of which the old English
folk believed that it grew only where Danish
blood had been spilt. V
“ I sometimes think that never blows so red
The rose as where some buried Caesar
C F
That.evcry hyacinth the garden wears
Dropt in her lap from some once lovely
cad."
Is it because of Danish blood that our blue
anemone has such a me luxuriancei‘ After
you have toiled the we miles to our nearest
station, the first place to which the train
carries you is Athelncy where Alfred burnt the
cakes. Perhaps some long-forgotten battle
raged in these quiet fields and the bones of
(iuthrun's ficrcc soldiers and their fair northern
brides wait the eternal tcnn deep down under
our tender blue anemones.
Ci.orii.i).t lilARS().‘<'.
