54 MY DEVON YEAR 



almost seen unfolding, expanding, and opening its 

 fingers round the tiny germs of the blossoms that 

 will soon lift their pink or ivory spires into the sun- 

 shine and cool green nights of May. 



Both elms are not far behind, and their blossoms 

 fall in showers, and their outlines, thickened in early 

 March with a million flowers, ruddy on the more 

 common tree and paler upon the wych elm, now 

 for a moment grow into winter delicacy again before 

 the leaf-buds break on the bole, then climb aloft and 

 carry green to every crown. Suckers and saplings 

 at each tree-foot leap first into life ; every twig and 

 sprig of the hedgerow about the giant trunk twinkles 

 into leaf and joins the hawthorn, long since brushed 

 with opening buds. Then the lowermost branches 

 of the parent elm itself burst into foliage, and ere 

 the storm-thrush has hatched her eggs, high perched 

 in a nest at the first great fork of the tree, a veil of 

 growing green foams and billows upwards on the tide 

 of the sap to the kiss of the sun. So the world 

 wakes again, and unnumbered new-born leaves 

 murmur out the immemorial music of the wind, and 

 answer spring showers with thanksgiving. 



Of countless lesser things each hedge and ditch 

 and ancient covert-side is proud possessor. The annual 

 flowers, whose seed-buds long since broke naked 

 earth in Winter, now proclaim their identity to the 

 least skilled in such matters. A riot and struggle 

 of life crowds over the waste places, and its battle 

 is all beauty seen upon the surface, all strife if a man 



