JULY 



" Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on, 



Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, 

 Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, 



Sweet-william with his homely cottage-smell, 

 And stocks in fragrant blow ; 

 Roses that down the alleys shine afar, 



And open, jasmine-muffled lattices, 



And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, 

 And the full moon, and the white evening-star." 



Matthew Arnold. 



" And nearer to the river's trembling edge 



There grew broad flag-flowers, purple, prank'd with white, 

 And starry river-buds among the sedge, 



And floating water-lilies, broad and bright." 



Shelley. 



NO hard and fast line can be drawn between the last week July, 

 of June and the first of July ; the flowers crowd and Succession 

 overlap each other, and vary in their dates for coming o f Roses 

 out with the variations of the weather. Roses and Lilies reign 

 supreme above all the beauty that Midsummer brings us. 



Roses, in which we have been revelling through June, are 

 still entrancing in their beauty through the earlier weeks of 

 July. Fresh kinds are opening every day to fill the places of 

 those tired out with flowering; these have earned a rest, and 

 many of them in a little time will have made fresh growth and 

 be full of bud again. Some of the most lovely Cluster Roses 

 unfortunately bloom only once, and it is difficult to dissociate 

 from them a feeling of regret that their beauty is so transient, 

 and will shortly be gone for another year. 



93 



