6 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



So, in this joy of an awakened love for budding things, the poet 

 has been the first to herald with the gush of song the glories of the 

 grassy green. Whether he listened to the whistle of the blackbird, 

 or the tinkling of the sheep-bells on the thymy hills, he has drawn 

 the sweetest of his inspirations from the exhaustless fount of living 

 and growing beauty, and from the lowly grass has gathered up the 

 noblest melodies. How have all the nobles of the earth — the true 

 nobles of thought and action, the spiritual aristocracy of the world — 

 claimed brotherhood with humble things, and associated the hours of 

 their lives, and replenished the altars of their loves, with the poetic 

 teachings of green things, and the silent whispers of the grass ! The 

 Ettrick shepherd-boy, how he loved the grassy hills of his native land, 

 and the bonny lark which found shelter amid the tufted sprays ! His 

 brother, too, the undaunted ploughman of the north ; how has he 

 woven the grassy herbage into his noble songs : — 



Now in her green mantle blythe Nature arrays, 



And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes ; 



While birds warble welcome in ilka green shaw — 



To me it's delightless — my Nannie's awa! 



Burns. 



Did he shed tears upon the grass when the bitter world mocked him, 

 and stung him to the quick ?— the proudest of earth's children have 

 wept upon the turf, and why not he ? Homer loved the grass, and 

 Shakspere none the less. Who can recall to mind the lovely slopes 

 beside the grassy Avon, without thinking of the poet-boy, when he 

 used to lie musing on the green, holding converse with shapes 

 invisible to mortal eyes — building up his mighty temple of the ideal, 

 w eaving the world, and all its joys and sorrows, into one great mesh 

 of magic beauty, with the blue heaven and its sunshine above him, 

 and the green-cushioned grass beneath ? The sweetest of his con- 

 ceits were gathered, like dew-drops, in the green wilderness. Witness 

 his many fine expressions, as, "Lush and lusty grass:"* "Cold 

 would never let grass grow ;"f "Upon the grassy carpet ;"+ or still 

 more freshly, as in the speech of Lysander : — 



* The Tempest, Act ii., sc. 1. 



+ 2 King Henry VI., Act iii., sc. 2. 



X King Richard II., Act iii., sc. 3. 



