4 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



forth its pensile sword-like leaves with all the grace and majesty of a 

 palm, it flings around a profusion of fruits, and bestows invaluable 

 medicines upon the gratefiil children of the soil ; and wherever it is 

 seen it makes a velvet carpet of emerald beauty — a carpet on which 

 the heavy heart may sometimes tread, but on which joy mostly wan- 

 ders ; and from this universality of growth grass derives its specific 

 name. 



How joyously the grass springs forth with its cheerful face after the 

 spring or summer shower ; how rich and exuberant it looks, and how 

 it starts before all other vegetation in the growing race of Spring ! 

 When the Febrixary winds are piping, and the old woods are shaken 

 to their very hearts, the grass is the only plant which can dare the 

 nipping blast ; and the moment the frost breaks, it comes bristling 

 up through the black earth to refresh us with its heavenly promise ! 

 Under its protecting roots the seeds of the last year's flowers are 

 being sheltered, and its tufts soon form a canopy for the pale prim- 

 rose, and the fairy cowslip, and the violet — 



That morning-star of all the flowers, 

 The pledge of daylight's lengthening hours, 

 Which lifts up its dreamy eye of blue 

 To the younger sky of the self-same hue. 



The bursting glory of the green Spring exhilarates the heart, and 

 a new current of life flows through all the veins. Arcite felt it when 

 he rose and looked on the merry day, and, leaping on his courser, 

 dashed into the grove : — 



Aad loud he sang against the sunne sheene — 

 O, May ! with all thy flow'res and thy greene, 

 Right welcome be thou, faire freshe May ! 

 I hope that I some greene here getten may. 

 And from his courser, with a lusty heart, 

 Into the grove full hastily he start.* 



The poets have all chosen it as the broad and universal token of the 

 opening year. Thomson pictures the Spring as tripping over the 

 grassy turf on her mission of fertility and beauty: — 



Nor is the mead unworthy of thy foot; 

 * Chaucer— T^e Knight's Tale. 



