The Blessing of the Rain 



vision, for Nature, truest of painters, never Nature 

 fails to break her colors with such subtle 

 mixtures, that only the utmost training of 

 eye and hand enables the artist to hint 

 her secret upon canvas ; and he who, with 

 a palette of crude pigments of raw pri- 

 mary colors, seeks to render the shifting 

 emerald of spring, the topaz of the new- 

 mown field, or the gold of harvest, is as 

 one who would catch the flash of the dia- 

 mond, or the burning heart of the ruby, on 

 the brush's point, and think to imprison it 

 forever. 



There are some lines of Matthew Ar- 

 nold that a wet garden always brings to 

 mind, in which the poet has truly caught 

 the spirit of the fragrant scene. None 

 but a frequenter and true lover of gardens 

 could, in a few words, have thus pictured 

 the mingled dismay and hope with which 

 one views his garden-plot after a rain has 

 both distressed and refreshed it : 



So, some tempestuous morn in early June, 

 When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er, 



Before the roses and the longest day 

 When garden-walks, and all the grassy floor 



With blossoms, red and white, of fallen May, 

 And Chestnut-flowers are strewn 

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