THROUGH FIELDS AFLOWER 



,O in the full sunshine. Theirs 

 is not a beauty that needs the 

 glamour of dawn and dew. 

 Through the long days of high 

 summer earth has drunk sun- 

 shine and steeped herself in vital force. Now 

 she gives it back tenfold. All her waysides, 

 her waste places, are flushed and gilded. 

 Purple and scarlet and yellow run riot all 

 over her face. Stubble is sown thick with 

 tall stalks of evening- primrose so thick, 

 indeed, that the fine pale blossoms gleam 

 starwise over its green breadth of weeds. 

 And what sweetness wells up from their 

 powdery hearts ! a heavy, clinging fra- 

 grance that makes of the languid breeze the 

 wafts of a censer. Each flower, too, uplifts 

 a golden cross, as though Nature's priest, 

 duly anointed to shrive the dying Summer ! 

 For she is dying, though her doom is writ 

 in flowers. True, the rose remains, and lag- 

 gard lilies linger in garden nooks. But here 



