274 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



buttercup has an enamel of gold ; with the 

 nail you may scrape it off, leaving still a yellow 

 ground, but not reflecting the sunlight like 

 the outer layer. From the centre the golden 

 pollen covers the finger with dust like that 

 from the wing of a butterfly. In the bunches 

 of grass and by the gateways the germander 

 speedwell looks like tiny specks of blue stolen, 

 like Prometheus' fire, from the summer sky. 

 When the mowing-grass is ripe the heads of 

 sorrel are so thick and close that at a little 

 distance the surface seems as if sunset were 

 always shining red upon it." This is about 

 half of a passage of description which ends : 

 *' Hedges, thick and high, and full of flowers, 

 birds and living creatures, of shade and flecks 

 of sunshine dancing up and down the barks of 

 the trees— I love their very thorns. You do 

 not know how much there is in the hedges." 



How thoroughly Pre-Raphaelite this is ! 

 We can match it in a poem already quoted for 

 another purpose, Tennyson's '* Mariana " : — 



With blackest moss the flower-plots 

 Were thickly crusted, one and all : 



The rusted nails fell from the knots 

 That held the pear to the gabled wall. 



