Wild Flowers 



as they sow salt on razed cities that naught may 

 grow, to warm plains rich in all things, and with 

 great hills as pictures hung on a wall to gaze at. 

 Where there are beech-trees the land is always 

 beautiful; beech-trees at the foot of this hill, beech- 

 trees at Arundel in that lovely park which the Duke 

 of Norfolk, to his glory, leaves open to all the world, 

 and where the anemones flourish in unusual size and 

 number; beech-trees in Marlborough Forest; beech- 

 trees at the summit to which the lane leads that was 

 spoken of just now. Beech and beautiful scenery go 

 together. 



But the primroses by that lane did not appear till 

 late; they covered the banks under the thousand 

 thousand ash-poles; foxes slipped along there fre- 

 quently, whose friends in scarlet coats could not 

 endure the pale flowers, for they might chink their 

 spurs homewards. In one meadow near primroses 

 were thicker than the grass, with gorse interspersed, 

 and the rabbits that came out fed among flowers. 

 The primroses last on to the celandines and cowslips, 

 through the time of the bluebells, past the violets 

 one dies but passes on the life to another, one sets 

 light to the next, till the ruddy oaks and singing 

 cuckoos call up the tall mowing grass to fringe summer. 



Before I had any conscious thought it was a delight 

 to me to find wild flowers, just to see them. It was 

 a pleasure to gather them and to take them home; 

 a pleasure to show them to others to keep them as 

 long as they would live, to decorate the room with 

 them, to arrange them carelessly with grasses, green 

 sprays, tree - bloom large branches of chestnut 

 snapped off, and set by a picture perhaps. Without 

 conscious thought of seasons and the advancing hours 

 to light on the white wild violet, the meadow orchis, 



35 



