He who would have beautiful roses in his garden must have 

 beautiful roses in his heart." 



DEAN HOLE. 



JUNE 



" Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 

 The bridal of the earth and sky." 



GEORGE HERBERT. 



/GREETING to June. The garden is overflowing with 

 ^^ the first flowers of Summer ; the sky above them 

 is one bright tint of blue, bereft of a single, even the tiniest, 

 cloud. Truly, on such a day as this George Herbert must 

 have seen "the bridal of the earth and sky." Over all the 

 fields is spread the gold of the buttercups, the golden ring 

 which Nature gives, binding as one in their union heaven 

 and earth. Every corner of the lovely world holds tokens 

 of joy to-day, more especially the fields and hedgerows ; here 

 the honey-sweet scent of the gorse is on the warm air, wooing 

 bee and butterfly to partake of its perfume. In the chestnuts, 

 whose blossom is the glory of the land at the present time, 

 what a music of bees is among their leaves ! Along the 

 stream-side, as one walks at noonday, there is heard a gentle 

 chorus from the glittering golden wings of insects collected 

 together at certain bends and turns of the shallows over 

 the sun-flecked breast of the winding water. 



What shall I say of the garden of early June? As I 

 stand here in the clear light, from the fields or lane a-near 

 is borne on the wind the scent of the hawthorn, and from 

 the garden itself, giving odours of lilac and narcissus, number- 

 less memories come. "It is certainly true," says a writer, 

 " that nothing calls up associations of the past as does the 



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