the year's new birth, and always, as the violet
yielded to the rose, I have known a fear that I had not sufficiently
prized this boon of heaven whilst it was with me. Many hours I have
spent shut up among my books, when I might have been in the meadows. Was
the gain equivalent? Doubtfully, diffidently, I hearken what the mind
can plead.

I recall my moments of delight, the recognition of each flower that
unfolded, the surprise of budding branches clothed in a night with green.
The first snowy gleam upon the blackthorn did not escape me. By its
familiar bank, I watched for the earliest primrose, and in its copse I
found the anemone. Meadows shining with buttercups, hollows sunned with
the marsh marigold held me long at gaze. I saw the sallow glistening
with its cones of silvery fur, and splendid with dust of gold. These
common things touch me with more of admiration and of wonder each time I
behold them. They are once more gone. As I turn to summer, a misgiving
mingles with my joy.




SUMMER


I.


To-day, as I was reading in the garden, a waft of summer perfume--some
hidden link of association in what I read--I know not what it may have
been--took me back to school-boy holidays; I recovered with strange
intensity that lightsome mood of long release from tasks, of going away
to the seaside, which is one of childhood's blessings. I was in the
train; no rushing express, such as bears you great distances; the sober
train which goes to no place of importance, which lets you see the white
steam of the engine float and fall upon a meadow ere you pass. Thanks to
a good and wise father, we youngsters saw nothing of seaside places where
crowds assemble; I am speaking, too, of a time more than forty years ago,
when it was still possible to find on the coasts of northern England,
east or west, spots known only to those who loved the shore for its
beauty and its solitude. At every station the train stopped; little
stations, decked with beds of flowers, smelling warm in the