On English ground you understand the letter 

 . , Ere the fall, how Adam lived in a garden/' 



MRS. BROWNING* 



MAY 



On silver flute is played Spring's truest praise, 



Songs that Pan keeps his own though he be mute ; 

 Songs that the thrush extols in Spring's young days 



On silver flute. 



Tune well thy flower-lays, O orchard lute, 



Whilst thou dost sit on softly lisping sprays, 

 Strung with the silver blossoms of the fruit. 



Like meteors the falling blossoms blaze 



White on the grass to wake unwakened root ; 

 While yet Pan's eulogist trills his sweet lays 



On silver flute ! 



ANDERSON GRAHAM says in his delightful book 

 "All the Year with Nature," of those "who will 

 follow the calling of Adam worthily should begin by loving 

 flowers as a scholar loves books, not for glory of having a 

 great collection, still less for an unintelligent or semi-commer- 

 cial pride in what is rare and expensive, but for themselves, 

 their fragrance, their beauty, their foliage, or for the many 

 curious reproductive and other gifts given them by Nature." 

 And again Courtenay says : " Gardening is a pursuit peculiarly 

 adapted for reconciling and combining the tastes of the two 

 sexes, and indeed of all ages. It is, therefore, of all amuse- 

 ments the most retentive of domestic affection. It is, perhaps, 

 most warmly pursued by the very young, and by those who 

 are far advanced in life, before the mind is occupied with 

 worldly business, and after it has become disgusted with it. 



us H 



