of blossom, and the woods have but grown The Tribe 

 darker with gloom of the east while the first the 



<J 



yellow clans along the hedgerows have been 

 swept by hail. How often, again, the wind of the 

 west has been fragrant with cowslip and ox-eye, 

 with daffodil and wallflower, with the pungent 

 growing -odours of barberry and butcher's- 

 broom and the unloosening larch, when, 

 indeed, the sallow-blooms have put on their 

 gold, and the green woodpecker is calling his 

 love-notes in the copses, and yet the delaying 

 swallow has not been seen north of the Loire 

 or where the Loiny winds between Moret and 

 the woods of Fontainebleau ? How often the 

 wild-rose has moved in first-flame along the 

 skirts of hornbeam-hedge or beech-thicket, or 

 the honeysuckle begun to unwind her pale 

 horns of ivory and moongold, and yet across 

 the furthest elm-tops to the south the magic 

 summons of the cuckoo has been still unheard 

 in the windless amber dawn, or when, as in the 

 poet's tale, the myriad little hands of Twilight 

 pull the shadows out of the leaves and weave 

 the evening dark. But when the cry of the 

 plover is abroad we know that our less ideal 

 yet hardly less lovely and welcome Spring is 

 come at last : that Winter is old and broken 

 and shuffling north, clinging to the bleak 

 uplands and windygates : and this, even 



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