of blossom, and the woods have but grown The Tribe 



darker with gloom of the east while the first °^ the 



yellow clans along the hedgerows have been over * 



swept by hail. How often, again, the wind of the 



west has been fragrant with cowslip and ox-eye, 



with daffodil and wallflower, with the pungent 



growing -odours of barberry and butcher's- 



broom and the unloosening larch, when, 



indeed, the sallow-blooms have put on their 



gold, and the green woodpecker is calling his 



love-notes in the copses, and yet the delaying 



swallow has not been seen north of the Loire 



or where the Loiny winds between Moret and 



the woods of Fontainebleau ? How often the 



wild-rose has moved in first-flame along the 



skirts of hornbeam-hedge or beech-thicket, or 



the honeysuckle begun to unwind her pale 



horns of ivory and moongold, and yet across 



the furthest elm-tops to the south the magic 



summons of the cuckoo has been still unheard 



in the windless amber dawn, or when, as in the 



poet's tale, the myriad little hands of Twilight 



pull the shadows out of the leaves and weave 



the evening dark. But when the cry of the 



plover is abroad we know that our less ideal 



yet hardly less lovely and welcome Spring is 



come at last : that Winter is old and broken 



and shuffling north, clinging to the bleak 



uplands and windygates : and this, even 



IOI 



