XII. CORA AND KRONOS. 211 



of a stem on which my knife makes little impression. I 

 have not the slightest idea how old it is, still less how oid 

 it might one day have been if I had not gathered it ; and, 

 less than the least, what hinders it from becoming as old 

 as it likes ! What doom is there over these bright green 

 sprays, that they may never win to any height or space 

 of verdure, nor persist beyond their narrow scope of 

 years ? 



11. And the more I think the more I bewilder my- 

 self ; for these bushes, which are pruned and clipped 

 by the deathless Gardener into these lowly thickets of 

 bloom, do not strew the ground with fallen branches and 

 faded clippings in any wise, it is the pining umbrage of 

 the patriarchal trees that tinges the ground and betrays 

 the foot beneath them : but, under the heather and the 

 Alpine rose. Well, what is under them, then ? I never 

 saw, nor thought of looking, will look presently under 

 my own bosquets and beds of lingering heather-blossom : 

 beds indeed they were only a month since, a foot deep 

 in flowers, and close in tufted cushions, and the moun- 

 tain air that floated over them rich in honey like a 

 draught of metheglin. 



12. Not clipped, nor pruned, I think, after all, nor 

 dwarfed in the gardener's sense ; but pausing in perpet- 

 ual youth and strength, ordained out of their lips of rose- 

 ate infancy. Rose-trees the botanists have falsely 

 called the proudest of them ; yet not trees in any wise, 

 they, nor doomed to know the edge of axe at their 



