I go like one in a dream, unbidden my feet know the way 



To that garden * . . in blossom with the red and white hawthorn 



of May." 



MATHILDE BLIND. 



MAY 



TV/I" ANY a varied sweet songster is singing 



" On boughs that the sweet mouth blanches 

 With flowery frost of May," 



and also amid the " greenest growth " of the hedgerows and 

 thickets. How sweetly comes the song of the chaffinch, now 

 in perfect note, described by Tennyson as a 



" Helpless innocent bird, 

 That has but one plain passage of few notes, 

 Will sing the simple passage o'er and o'er, 

 For all one April morning, till the ear 

 Wearies to hear it." 



Who knows but what it sings for joy of its completed 

 nest a piece of exquisite workmanship or at having found 

 some wild apple hedge suited to its taste wherein to build it ? 



There is no time in all the year like to a morn of May, 

 when, after a night of gentle showers, every leaf in the woods, 

 every bud on hedge, glimmers in the sunshine. 



Nothing is more delightful than a walk through our 

 Middlesex lanes. What scene could be more fair? The 

 very name of England is exemplified in these daisy-strewn 

 meadows, and lanes whose hedges are o'ertwined with honey- 

 suckle and travellers'-joy ; deep fragrant denes, very emerald 

 seas with blue waves of dancing bluebells; garden garths 

 with their ambrosial clustering growths. What sweet invita- 



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