' As for our love for gardens, it is the last refuge of art in the minds 

 and souls of many Englishmen." 



SIR ARTHUR HELPS. 



JANUARY 



Sad and silent light of day, 

 Dawns upon a world of grey ; 

 Wind-borne rain to sleeping corn, 

 Brings a promise of the dawn 

 Dawn of Spring, the year's first gladness, 

 Farewell words to tears of sadness. 

 Hand on latch of Winter's gate, 

 Weeping Spring doth watch and wait. 



Fair-faced stars crowd high above, 

 Heralding Spring's time of love, 

 Their clear beams that earthward shine, 

 Promises the time divine : 

 Dawn of Spring, the new joy reigning, 

 Overpast all sad complaining ; 

 Spring comes from the wintry east 

 To her sunlit, flower-set feast. 



' I V HE shortest day of the year has passed, and with hopeful 

 joy we greet the young days of the New Year, although 

 at present and for some time yet to come we may expect that 

 the frost will " grip all things bitterly." The only life of 

 the bare fields are the cawing rooks, for ever flying across 

 the grey sky, passing lazily homewards to the leafless trees. 

 Now and again as we walk along the lanes where still linger 

 the remains of autumn's beauty in the few leaves upon the 

 low bushes, we may hear the shrill notes of a startled black- 

 bird as it flies at our approach from the underhedge where 

 the hoar-frost has drifted in white patches. Flying from tree 

 to tree the chaffinch as it rises and falls in its flight shows 

 strangely the white feathers in its expanded wings, seeming to 



