210 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



a larch plantation, or with tall hazel memory and expectancy of lily-scents 



bushes which bring the woodman, the hid in Summer nights. In a village a 



charcoal-burner and the basket-maker mile away is a learned and proud 



every time their growth is of age. gardener who fosters a mezerion tree 



These woods bear, before the meadows, which he brought from Switzerland 



those early flowers which may open for its rarity. 



ere leafage shuts out the light. Another wood has greater trees and 



One wood sinks to the shore, and there fewer ; its dimness is briefly starred 



in May lilies of the valley spring so with blackberry blossom, and bluebells 



thickly that the wary tourist thinks hover there like a creeping haze always 



their young leaves those of garlic, about to rise. When the bluebells are 



Inland, another wood has stony hoi- gone with May fainter harebells come 



lows filled with the first snowdrops, as a shadow of that haze. But in this 



which leave a bright green softness wood the foxgloves of July are most 



amid the harsh soil of March 5 before memorable ; they spire in companies 



this can die portions of it separate, until lost in their own perspective ; 



first palely, then more tall, until little there are steep crags which seem 



fingers lean down and yellow into higher for the slender stems springing 



single daffodils. Barren places bear from every crevice : they stand in a 



green hellebore in May, known only strange silence, as if no bees would 



by the greater spareness of the divided come to their twilit dells but 



leaves (each springing from the ground the one white foxglove which once 



on its own stalk) until the green petals grew tallest in the most remote cluster 



of the bloom appear like the calyx of was stranger and more wonderful than 



some greater bloom whose petals were the silence. 



shed unseen. Hill-tops make a little land beyond 



In these woods, and perhaps nowhere these woods, a hollow before the last 



else in England, Daphne Mezereum hills begin. Herb- willow and palm- 



(the Mezerion Tree of Bacon's garden) sallow seem a filagree touched with dim 



grows wild ; before any leaves come yellow and dark silver as they come 



its thin sticks are muffled closely in against an April sky ; there are fenny 



purple florets, and to pass it when the places where sweet gale disguises May 



woods obscure the March moonlight with a simulation of Autumn bronze ; 



is to possess a tenuous sense of the and everywhere grass of Parnassus 



