60 2T|)e OJartren's 



April the French poet assigns a place exalted 

 above all the other months : " Avril, rhonneur 

 et des bois et des mots!" Unsurpassed in the 

 original, the apostrophe is admirably rendered 

 by Andrew Lang : 



April, pride of murmuring 



Winds of spring, 

 That beneath the winnowed air 

 Trap with subtle nets and sweet 



Flora's feet, 

 Flora's feet, the fleet and fair. . . . 



Nothing could be more truly descriptive of the 

 mad hurrying into life of the spring flora than 

 the spirit and allegro throughout the poem. 



I think the first of inanimate wild life to 

 pierce the ground is the well-known member of 

 the aroids, the skunk-cabbage {Symplocarpus 

 fcettdus). A rank, foul, noxious weed, " a noi- 

 some hermit of the marsh," it is usually consid- 

 ered surely an unjust stricture. It has a clean, 

 wholesome smell, a pungent, growing, out-of- 

 doors smell, with no taint of corruption. Greuze 

 would have admired its lovely greens, and, I 

 doubt not, a poet will yet be born to praise its 

 rugged precocity. I have planted it in the rear 

 garden, on the edge of the copse, as a wild foli- 

 age-plant, just to watch its incurved horn and 

 gigantic leaves expand. So long as we grow 



