A garden must not be too large ; you must feel yourself 

 enclosed in it*** 



ALPHONSE KARR. 



APRIL 



'Tis violet-tide, hidden in wood and thicket, 



Scenting the ambient air, from sight they hide, 

 Spring's sapphire gems, e'en one, deign not to pick it, 

 'Tis violet-tide ! 



Draw not from them their emerald veil aside 



Of sun- wooed leaflets by the garden wicket, 

 Where to and fro nest-seeking songsters glide. 



Brief, sweet the time of violets, quick it 



Departs, and soon its joys subside ; 

 Come out, while yet in glade and woodland thicket, 

 'Tis violet-tide ! 



" A GARDEN," says Sadi, the Persian poet, " is a delight 

 * to the eye and a solace to the soul ; it soothes angry 

 passions, and produces that pleasure which is a foretaste of 

 paradise." He whose mind is in keeping with this saying 

 must welcome the year's first returning season, and own 

 the beauty of " braw Spring." The very earliest garden 

 blossoms, hellebore and aconite among them, have gone, and 

 on the verge of fading are the daffodils ; at their adieu does 

 not Herrick's lament come to our minds, and is not his sorrow 



ours also : 



" Fair daffodils, we weep to see 

 You haste so soon away." 



The pink jewels of the almond blossoms in their brown-bough 

 setting must also, alas ! too soon lose their lustre. The purple 

 shoots rise from the ground higher every day, marking the 



winter bed of the paeonies, and by their side the bright green 



87 



