of the ruddy -hued fallaways of the poplar The Wild 

 overhead. I wonder if in most places the Apple, 

 flowering-currant is no more than an ordinary 

 shrub. Here, where I write, there are several 

 small trees of it, taller than the general growth 

 of the lilac, tall as the laburnum, though at 

 the time of their unloosening the one had not 

 revealed her delicate mauve and white, while 

 the other was still a miser of the countless 

 gold he will now soon be spreading upon the 

 wind. The pink blooms, carmine-ended where 

 the five or six unfolded blossoms hang like 

 fruit, droop in a roseal shower, as innumerous 

 as the golden drops of the laburnum-rain or 

 the suspended snowflakes of the white lilac 

 themselves. The brown bees have long dis- 

 covered this flusht Eden ; their drowsily sweet 

 murmurous drone is as continuous as though 

 these slow -swaying pastures were of linden- 

 bloom and the hour the heart of summer. 



Everywhere the largesse of Spring has 

 followed her first penury in the scanty snow 

 of the blackthorn on bare boughs. What, by 

 the way, is the origin of the phrase * Black- 

 thorn-sorrow ' ? I heard it again recently, as 

 though to say that summer was safely at hand 

 so that now there was no more fear of the 

 blackthorn sorrow. However, as later I hope 

 to deal with the complex folklore of the Thorn, 

 125 



