104 A HAMPSHIRE TROUT STREAM 



school, we should never have invented names for the 

 seasons.' 



Of all the myriad poets of spring, none has ever 

 given its character in these islands so faithfully as 

 Arthur Clough in the lines beginning 



* Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane.' 



One should make a point of reading them every year 

 on May Day, so as to understand and enjoy the design 

 of the season ; but it is a salutary rule to abstain from 

 quotation, especially just now, when every living creature 

 is astir, and far too busy to listen to one. 



This is another month of May from the one I have 

 just been prosing about ; a year later 1895 and with 

 the fearful experience of last winter behind us. Spring 

 has come at last, backward, it is true, but already lavish 

 in beauty of leaf and flower. The grass in meadows 

 beside this Hampshire stream is not more than ankle- 

 deep yet, but it is already embroidered with royal gold 

 of kingcups and wan lavender of lady's smock. It is 

 interesting to analyse the components of the rich green 

 tapestry of the river banks. It is not all grass that 

 serves for the general ground of malachite, which would 

 be criard were it not shot with myrtle green of mari- 

 gold leaves and olive green of creeping jenny, pointille 

 (as heralds would say) with pink buds of marsh valerian, 

 shadowed with rush clumps of rifle-green, and variegated 

 with the brown flowering spikes of sedge. When the 

 herbage grows taller all this is changed; the effect 

 remains soft and satisfying, but nothing equals in rich- 

 ness the pile of this spring carpet. 



