40 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



them. One wonders whether there is not a regular drift of 

 dandelion eastwards. To come back to Tennyson, who was 

 more interested in the theme, there is no neater description 

 than his of the dandelion head preparing to cast its seed. 

 Like thousands of other children, taking their share in seed 

 dispersal, the little pair in Aylmer's Field amuse themselves 



by blowing 



' From the tiny pitted target, 

 What looked a flight of fairy arrows aimed 

 All at one mark, all hitting ' ; 



and he uses the same comparison several times, once in 

 describing the shield of the warrior of the noonday sun : 



' As if the flower, 



That blows a globe of after arrowlets, 

 Ten thousandfold had grown.' 







What a different manner is his from that much more 

 thorough investigator but less artful writer. In a seed- 

 time poem which did not quite ' come off' George Meredith 



wrote : 



* Flowers of the willow-herb are wool ; 

 Flowers of the briar-berry red ; 

 Shedding their seed as the breeze may rule. 

 Flowers of the thistle loosen the thread. 

 Flowers of the clematis drip in beard, 

 Slack from the fir-tree youngly climbed, 

 Chaplet in air, flies foliage seared ; 

 Heeled upon earth, lie clusters rimed.' 



You may see on the north coast of the Isle of Wight, 

 near Seaview, clematis hanging from the firs twenty feet 

 above your head ; and there realise under the rough ex- 

 perimental words of the poem the truth and meaning of the 

 observation. 



No scheme over the whole field of nature is so various 



