64 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



indoors, and place it side by side with other blossoms 

 yellow flag and blue periwinkle, and shining yellow 

 marsh-marigold, and poppy and cornflower and it has 

 no lustre, and is no more to the soul than a flower made 

 out of wax or paper. Look at it here, in the brilliant 

 sunlight and the hot wind, waving to the wind on its 

 long thorny sprays all over the vast disordered hedges ; 

 here in rosy masses, there starring the rough green 

 tangle with its rosy stars a rose-coloured cloud on the 

 earth and Summer's bridal veil and you will refuse to 

 believe (since it will be beyond your power to imagine) 

 that anywhere on the earth, in any hot or tem- 

 perate climate, there exists a more divinely beautiful 

 sight. 



If among the numberless cults that flourish in the 

 earth we could count a cult of the rose, to this spot the 

 votaries of the flower might well come each midsummer 

 to hold their festival. They would be youthful and 

 beautiful, their lips red, their eyes full of laughter ; and 

 they would be arrayed in light silken garments of 

 delicate colour green, rose, and white ; and their arms 

 and necks and foreheads would shine with ornaments 

 of gold and precious stones. In their hands would be 

 musical instruments of many pretty shapes with which 

 they would sweetly accompany their clear voices as 

 they sat or stood beneath the old oak trees, and danced 

 in sun and shade, and when they moved in bright pro- 

 cession along the wide grass-grown roads, through 

 forest and farm-land. 



