JULY. 113 



who feels that she is passing her prime, seems now 

 to make her greatest efforts to seem young and gay. 

 Her smiles are more generous than in the coy days 

 of spring ; and the florid opulence of her poppied 

 charms blaze to the public eye, where formerly only 

 those who wooed her intimately found the maiden 

 modesty of pale primrose and shrinking violet. To 

 the young and inexperienced the lavish display of 

 mature charms always suggests a heyday of happi- 

 ness ; but those who study Nature's moods read 

 another story in this profuse advertisement of brilliant 

 colour. The fixed flush of scarlet poppy differs not 

 least from the changing tints of spring's tender blooms 

 in the fact that it hides the dried stalks and ripened 

 seed-pods of those earlier charms. It means that 

 harvest is at hand ; and when the short-lived beauty 

 of the poppies falls, we discover that the life of the 

 year is going, and that winter treads on the heels of 

 autumn. 



THE REMNANT OF A CHOIR. 



When the poppies blaze among the yellowing 

 corn, the cuckoo has gone and most of the song birds 

 are silent. The yellowhammer still reiterates his 

 changeless tune, and his cousin the cornbunting 

 delivers his absurdly inadequate " Tit-tit-titter-r-r " 

 with as much show and effort as any famous tenor. 

 The whitethroat still flips himself up out of the 

 hedge, and utters in descending the queer, zig-zag 

 trill that accords so well with his erratic flight. The 

 skylark, rising and falling in the blue, still winds and 

 unwinds his silver chain of song from sky to earth ; 



I 



