" Gardens full of flowers 

 Dew'd with such distilling showers*** 



SHAKESPEARE. 



APRIL 



All fresh from sleep the flowers of Spring are waking, 

 The primrose-stars and violet-eyes in meadow peep. 

 The white flower foam on hedge will soon be breaking, 

 All fresh from sleep. 



Homeward each homesick bird hastes Spring to keep, 

 Fast westward their God-guided tracks are making, 

 To dew-wet woodlands with green grasses deep ; 



Bright tropic skies, and lotus-streams forsaking, 



To woo sweet English April that doth laugh and weep 

 Birds, friends of flowers that now new shape are taking, 

 All fresh from sleep. 



" Rosy plumelets tuft the larch." 



TENNYSON. 



/ "T" V HE larch (Larix Europ*ea\ a well-known tree in most 

 of our woodlands here, is fast hanging on its branches 

 for boughs it has none those delicately-formed pink tassels 

 of its blossoms side by side to the dark brown cones of last 

 and former years. The tender green of its feathery foliage, 

 which appears soon after the pink "plumelets," is seen to 

 perfection when sparkling with the silver of an April shower ; 

 and is there anything more beautiful than an April shower ? 

 All in a moment the bright gold quits the land, and hands 

 invisible hang the blue dome of heaven with white cloud- 

 garlands, fairy-like and fantastically woven. Then it seems 

 as though these skyland flowers are shaken, and from them 

 falls countless strips of silver on to the emerald land ; when 

 again, all in a moment, as quickly as they were looped from 



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