JUNE. 179 



suckle, and the verdurous, snowy-flowered 

 elder embellish every way-side, or light up the 

 most shadowy region of the wood. Field-peas 

 and beans, in full flower, add their spicy aro- 

 ma: the red clover is at once splendid and 

 profuse of its honied breath. The young corn 

 is bursting into ear ; the awned heads of rye, 

 wheat, and barley, and the nodding panicles 

 of oats shoot from their green and glaucous 

 stems, in broad, level, and waving expanses of 

 present beauty and future promise. The very 

 waters are strewn with flowers; the buck-bean, 

 the water-violet, the elegant flowering-rush, and 

 the queen of the waters, the pure and splendid 

 white lily invest every stream and lonely mere 

 with grace. The mavis and the merle, those 

 worthy favourites of the olden bards, and the 

 wood-lark fill the solitude with their eloquent 

 evening songs. 



Over its own sweet voice the stock- dove broods ; 



and the cuckoo pours its mellowest note from 

 some region of twilight shadow. The sunsets 

 of this month are transcend antly glorious : the 

 mighty luminary goes down pavilioned amidst 

 clouds of every hue the splendour of burnish- 



N2 



