138 FROM A MIDDLESEX GARDEN 



A passionate nightingale a-down the lane 

 Shakes, with the force and volume of his song, 

 A hawthorn's heaving foliage ; such a strain, 

 Self-caged like him to make his singing strong 

 Some poet may have made in days of yore 

 Untold, unwritten, lost for evermore." 



How many a tender flower-rhyme and sweetly-worded 

 epitaph in praise of June passes through one's mind. It is 

 now George Meredith's 



" Along my path the bugloss blue, 



The star with frint in moss ; 

 The foxgloves drop from throat to top 

 A daily lesser bell." 



Or William Morris's 



" Fair is the morn to-day, the blossom scent 



Floats across the fresh grass, and the bees, 

 With low song, to rose and lily go, 

 A gentle wind is in the heavy trees." 



Or, maybe, Swinburne's 



" In the red-rose land not a mile 



Of meadows from stile to stile, 



Of the valleys from stream to stream, 

 But the air is a long sweet dream, 



And the earth is a wide sweet smile." 



