APRIL 85 



and blinking in the sunshine. I have a double-flowered 

 scarlet Eock-rose, not figured in any of my books, and 

 which I have rarely seen in gardens. It flowers persist- 

 ently for many months. 



April 17 'th. We have had lately a severely cold week 

 Blackthorn winter indeed. How the poor garden 

 shrivels and shrinks, and seems to lose all its colour ! 



Many years ago, in a volume of Tennyson given me by 

 Owen Meredith, he wrote on the fly-leaf the following little 

 poem, full of sympathy for the gardener : 



In Nature can aught be unnatural ? 



If so, it is surely the frost, 



That cometh by night and spreadeth death's pall 

 On the promise of summer which spring hath lost. 

 In a clear spring night 

 Such a frost pass'd light 

 Over the budding earth, like a ghost. 



But the flowers that perish'd 



Were those alone 

 Which, in haste to be cherish'd 

 And loved and known, 



Had too soon to the sun all their beauty shown. 

 Lightly vested, 

 Amorous-breasted 



Blossom of almond, blossom of peach- 

 Impatient children, with hearts unsteady, 

 So young, and yet more precocious each 



Than the leaves of the summer, and blushing already 

 These perished because too soon they lived ; 

 But the oak-flower, self -restrained, survived ; 



' If the sun would win me,' she thought, he must 



Wait for me, wooing me warmly the while ; 

 For a flower's a fool, if a flower would trust 

 Her whole sweet being to one first smile.' 



