126 FROM A MIDDLESEX GARDEN 



ent, from the love stories of selfish humanity ! The exquisite 

 poetic idyll of a bird's life and love is it not a thing to put 

 us inferior creatures to shame ? . . . For are we ever as true 

 in our vows as the lark to his mate ? . . . Are we as sincere 

 in our thanksgiving for the sunlight as the merry robin, who 

 sings as blithely in the Winter snows as in the flower-filled 

 mornings of Spring ? " 



May suggests so many beautiful thoughts thoughts that 

 come to us as we look upon the great gold marsh-marigolds 

 in the fringe of rushes of the stream-side, or watch the broad 

 sunbeams cleaving a passing cloud and rushing rapturously 

 to earth ; or listen to the cuckoo " calling, calling, never 

 weary of calling to the Spring." Another Spring-thought 

 that comes to memory is that from one of Mary Linskill's 

 novels, so charming in expression that it is worth repeating : 

 " Better even than the after-vision of poets and seers is one 

 free, fresh hour when your footstep falls upon the daisies, 

 having nowhere else to fall for the crowding of them ; when 

 you feel upon your cheek and forehead the cool, dainty airs 

 that come up from the blue sea, and reach you through the 

 boughs of tufted larches and tasselled willows ; and when 

 your ear listens entranced always newly entranced to the 

 voice of the blackbird that comes to you from the whinbrake 

 on the hill." 



The cuckoo calling from emerald branches; the first 

 swallows swiftly darting through the transparent air in these 

 the glad days of May. The warm, gracious shower has 

 quickened into life the last delaying buds; while in the 

 garden, as in daisied mead, we see the footsteps of Proser- 

 pina. 



