312 COUNTRY RAMBLES. 



the idle shadows resting on the white dust; let me hear the Humble 

 Bees, and stay to look down on the yellow Dandelion disk. Let me 

 see the very Thistles opening their great crowns I should miss the 

 Thistles; the Reed Grasses hiding the Moorhen; the Bryony bine, 

 at first crudely ambitious and lifted by force of youthful sap straight 

 above the hedgerow, to sink of its weight presently and progress with 

 crafty tendrils; Swifts shoot through the air with outstretched wings, 

 like crescent-headed shaftless arrows darted from the clouds; the 

 Chaffinch with a feather in her bill; all the living staircase of Spring, 

 step by step, upwards to the great gallery of the Summer; let me 

 watch the same succession year by year." 



THE END. 



