74 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



blue to be seen any day in our parks), but bearing 

 on its petal the unhappy boy's name. As the "Lusiad" 

 has it : 



"The hyacinth bewrays the doleful 'Ai,' 

 And culls the tribute of Apollo's sigh. 

 Still on its bloom the mournful flower retains 

 The lovely blue that dyed the stripling's veins." 



The name of the godfather, or even his " Ai " that 

 greeted the death of the youth, is hard to find on 

 the petals of our cultivated hyacinth. Let our wild 

 species then beat it in frankness by proclaiming that* 

 this part of the story is unsupported fancy. 



The note of the bluebell is triumphant abundance. 

 It is one of the flowers that children have been 

 picking eagerly for a thousand springs, yet it survives 

 in apparently unabated luxuriance. Long after the 

 near approach of a town has exterminated many 

 another flower equally coveted, the wild hyacinth 

 spreads its rosettes and sends up its blossoms in their 

 accustomed places. They come up among the 

 rubbish with which the builder strews the back yard, 

 and blossom, if we let them, more sturdily, but with a 

 slight paleness, at the edges of our garden paths. 

 Nothing but the removal of the trees daunts them. 

 By unseen means they leap from one wood to 

 another, and " bring the heavens down to earth " 

 there also. They sidle along the hedges so as to 

 vein the whole earth with the fabled colour of a 

 prince's blood. Now and then, on the north or the 

 east side of a wood, they fling their armies into the 

 mowing - grass, towering above dandelions, and 

 throwing cowslips and buttercups into the shade. 



