THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 17 



sions to be found in Crabbe's poems. It must be suffi- 

 cient to say that those allusions are most frequent in 

 the poems associated with Aldeburgh. A few summers 

 ago I visited Aldeburgh for the express purpose of com- 

 paring its flora to-day with what it was when Crabbe 

 wrote The Borough. Almost all the poet's plants still 

 remain. The Roman nettle is, however, gone, as is also 

 the sea cotton- weed from the shingle beach between 

 Slaughden Quay and Hollesley Bay. But the rare and 

 interesting sea-pea (Lathy r us maritimus) continues to 

 flourish in abundance near Orford lighthouse and the 

 little sickle-medick in Dunwich churchyard. 



Matthew Arnold doubtless inherited from his father 

 the keen interest in wild flowers, which increased with 

 advancing years. Many of his poems abound in allu- 

 sions to the simple species of the country-side ; but the 

 most noted, which illustrate alike the scenes above 

 Oxford and the wild plants to be found there, are The 

 Scholar Gipsy and Thyrsis. These may be called the 

 two great Oxford poems, and the pleasant country on 

 the Berkshire side of the Thames, within a few miles of 

 Oxford, will always be associated with Arnold's name. 

 There he loved to wander on foot with Thyrsis, or some 

 other congenial friend, through the two Hinkseys, 

 where " nothing keeps the same," along the track by 

 Childsworth Farm, " past the high wood, to where the 

 elm-tree crowns the hill," and where he " knew each 

 field, each flower, each stick." As Tennyson liked to 

 think of his lost companion as at least laid in English 

 earth, beneath the clover sod, that takes the sunshine 

 and the rain, 



" And from his ashes may be made 

 The violet of his native land " ; 



