16 WILD FLOWERS. 



and seem to furnish it with a living voice of joy 

 and gladness, so that ceaseless hymns of thankfulness 

 and praise rise like incense from its groves. And 

 there the " heart of the observant poet " learns in 

 the " summer hours " those lessons, which, with un- 

 erring instinct, those creatures to whom reason has 

 not been given 



" Have taught so long and well ;" 



creatures from whom he may learn much, that it 

 is his especial mission, his especial glory to impart 

 whether in actual song or in the oft-times nobler 

 poetry of prose to the less keenly observant, less 

 quickly sensitive amongst his brother men. What 

 wonder, then, if he seek the broom-lands for his 

 musings ; the tracts for which, the flexible and poetic 

 language of Italy furnishes a distinctive word, i 

 ginestreti ? What wonder if modern poets, too, have 

 sung it ? Thus Chaucer says : 



" Amid the broom he basked him in the sun." 

 Wordsworth points out, that 



" The broom 



Full-flowered, and visible on every steep, 

 Along the copses runs in veins of gold." 



Thompson sings : 



" Or where Dan Sol, to slope his wheels began, 

 Amid the broom he basked him on the ground, 

 Where the wild thyme and camomile are found.' 



Cowper tells of 



" The broom 

 Yellow and bright as bullion unalloyed." 



