74 LONDON CHILDREN 



stay there or gather their harvest from the 

 bluebells, lit by the shuffling shadow mazes, 

 whose honey lay ready for loading. All 

 the morning the bells on the green towers 

 of stalk had been pealing their chimes of 

 fragrance to the bees; the busy harvesters 

 went heavily past, drawing their song- 

 inspiration from the infinite flame of the 

 sun, passing from bell to bell with an eager- 

 ness that must cause the wild hyacinths 

 to rejoice for would they not shortly 

 vanish like the celandines and the wind- 

 flowers? Nothing remains for long. A 

 brief life, and they have gone whither all 

 things that draw upon the earth-energy 

 must go. Though the blackbird sing so 

 leisurely, the flowers stand gently timorous 

 in their fragility, the veined leaf stain 

 itself with the sunbeams, and I am exalted 

 in the " light and fire of summer," yet for 

 all there is only so little of time. Therefore, 

 it seemed to me, by the brimming water, 

 so pitiable that millions were confined in 



