i8 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 



so with Matthew Arnold and the Scholar Gipsy. ' ' Thou 

 from the earth art gone long since," he cries, 



"and in some quiet churchyard laid 

 Some country nook, where o'er thy unknown grave 

 Tall grasses and white-flowering nettles wave, 

 Under a dark, red-fruited yew-tree's shade." 



How " he loved each simple joy the country yields," 

 especially the " store of flowers " " the frail-leaf' d, 

 white anemone," " dark bluebells drenched with dews," 

 the " purple orchises with spotted leaves," the " Cumnor 

 cowslips," the " red loosestrife and blond meadow- 

 sweet " ! And the " wide fields of breezy grass " above 

 Godstow Bridge appealed to him, and " the wood which 

 hides the daffodil," and the swamps where in May the 

 fritillary blossomed ! "I know," he cried, 



" I know what white, what purple fritillaries 

 The grassy harvest of the river-fields 

 Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields, 

 And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries." 



Above all, perhaps, he loved the " lone, sky-pointing 

 tree," " that lonely tree against the western sky." 



Charles Kingsley was a poet as well as a parson and a 

 novelist. He was also deeply intefested in science, and 

 once said that he would rather occupy a comparatively 

 lowly place in the roll of science than a higher one in 

 that of literature. To his love of natural history his 

 lectures on geology delivered at Chester, his papers on 

 the " wonders of the seashore " in Glaucus, and on the 

 " charm of birds " in Prose Idylls, bear abundant 

 evidence. But with him, as with Matthew Arnold, 

 botany was the favourite recreation. As a schoolboy 

 at Helston, in Cornwall, under the influence and in- 



