I know a little garden-close, 



Set thick with lily and with rose**' 



WILLIAM MORRIS. 



JUNE 



this pretty plant the thrift that now is brightening 

 many a garden walk with its tufts of blossom, John 

 Parkinson in his " Paradisi in Sole, Paradisus Terrestris, a 

 garden of pleasant flowers," tells us in his quaint manner, 

 that it is used " more frequent to empale a border, a knot, 

 because it abideth green winter and summer, and by cutting it 

 may grow thicke, and be kept in what form one list. Well 

 known unto all, many short and hard greene leaves . . . the 

 stalkes are naked of leaves a spanne high, bearing a tuft of 

 light purple or blush-coloured flowers standing round and 

 thrusting together." 



" A summer home of murmurous wings " 



sang Tennyson of the bees among the limes ; and how fitting 

 too are his words for this garden of thrift, wherein I walk 

 to-day, in the light of opulent June. How the joyful bees 

 revel in the mass of bloom ; what music they make as they 

 gather their store of honey ; with what haste they fly from 

 tuft to tuft, coming and going from hive to garden ! The 

 very name of this plant is suggestive of tidiness and careful- 

 ness, so orderly seems to be the garden where it is grown. 

 And, speaking metaphorically, would that the plant of thrift 

 were grown more about our paths ; far better would be the 

 accounts entered upon the pages of the Ledger of Time ! 



After a night of rain how fair glistens this garden of 

 thrift in the dawn sunlight. The leaves of every plant are 



53 



