22 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



"Welcome, bright birthday of flowers and song ! soft season of verdurous 

 freshness, bringing back the growth and glory of the world, and filling 

 manhood's heart with dreams of boyhood, and the fairy pictures of the 

 past ! Welcome, Season of Buttercups, and soft gales that kiss the 

 cheek with coolness ! When the honeysuckle peeps in for the first 

 time at the open window ; when we venture out once more with heads 

 uncovered, and watch the sparrows as they flutter round the ivy ; and, 

 forgetting hawks and cats, imagine their life a more joyous one than 

 our own ; when the hills come nearer to us with their fresh green 

 flanks, and the wild wood warbles with a full heart's song ; when the 

 bare branches wake from the night of winter to the morning of spring, 

 to peep at the buttercups and blades of light green grass that cluster 

 round their knees ; and then watching the amber bars of the east, as 

 the old sun climbs the slopes of Heaven, so wink and blink in the 

 glare of the sunlight, that tears start from their eyes, and form thou- 

 sands of yellow drops which take root on every spray and twig, and 

 form their summer coat of leaves. Beautiful, fresh season! sanctified 

 at thy shrine of flowers by all the little birds that w^oo and wed in the 

 brown branches, by all the new buds which break into emerald green- 

 ness ; by all the dreamy bees which sail singing after luscious honey ; 

 by all the milch kine that breathe a " smell of dairy," and wallow, knee 

 deep, in the new grass ; and by every milkmaid whose cheek blushes 

 with the rose of health, whose breath is ever like the meadowy breeze 

 of June, and who "makes her hand hard with labour, and her cheek 

 soft with pity." 



Spring is the Season of Buttercups ; it is the season also of bursting 

 buds and germinating seeds. First, we have troops of snow-drops 

 and flame-like crocuses, varied here and there with the bright yellow 

 of the winter aconite, and crowned with the iron leaves of the butcher's 

 broom. Then come the pale primroses "that die unmarried," 

 sprinkling the hedges with sulphur ; violets with breath as sweet as 

 from an angel's mouth : — 



As if Nature's incense-pans had spilt, 

 And shed the dews i' the air. 



Coltsfoot, the emblem of maternal care ; the rare whitlow grass, both 

 white and yellow, so small that they seem like legacies from the 

 fairies, who perished when Faith fled from the people : white wood 

 anemone, the spirit of the spring breezes; the pilewort, and the 



