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ffbe Single Bell 



19 



of flowers but how seldom do we actually see the ground 

 so covered that one can scarcely step without crushing 

 out a tender life. Now with violets, yes, one may really 

 find a carpet of "Violets dim, but sweeter than the 

 lids of Juno's eyes," and for a time, nothing else seems 

 to matter, even as in the days long gone when Henry 

 Wottonsang ■ JY ' / \ 



"Ye violets that first appeare, 



By your pure purple mantles ^nown, 

 Like the proud virgins of the ycare, 

 As if the spring were all your own." 



there were spaces in our carpet not patterned in 

 "Daisies pied and violets blue," surely hepatica would be 

 there to fill the spot with her thick green leaves and her 

 dainty star-shaped flowers. Should hepatica fail us, we may 

 count upon seeing the shy columbine gently swinging her 

 eagle-clawed blossoms like a rhythmic peal of imheard chimes; 

 while wound in and out, playfully holding violets here and 

 anemones there, moss covered in the sunshine and blinking 

 at us from the dewy shadows, the arbutus plays at hide-and- 

 seek and follow-my-leader with all of the other children of 

 my dingle dell. 



How tenderly must the stem old Puritans have treasured 

 the sweet arbutus which was the earliest blossom to greet 

 them in Plymouth Colony. To them it was a symbol and the 

 first harbinger of hope after the wracking voyage and a 



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