32 ALPINE FLOWERS AND GARDENS 



The impulse is to revisit again and again this 

 scene of promise, and watch with intent its gradual 

 realization. But here, in these regions at this 

 season, few things are so certain as the uncertain. 

 Winter has still a living voice in these affairs. 

 Smarting under a sense of its waning rule, vindic- 

 tively it summons up the remnants of its breath, 

 and hurls a blighting blizzard athwart the scene of 

 promise, nipping the vernal Crocus with its icy 

 blast, and crushing it beneath a foot of snow. 



Intrepid flower ! You recked naught of ' The 

 Shepheard's Calendar,' and thus 



' When the shining sunne laughetn once, 

 You deemen the spring is come attonce.' 



But the sun is not yet master of the situation ; 



again 



' Comes the breme winter with chamfred browes, 

 Full of wrinckles and frostic furrowes, 

 Drerily shooting his stormy- darte, 

 Which cruddles the blood and pricks the harte/ 



Unhappy flower ! So much for your pains ; so 

 much for duty done ! Coming thus intrepidly to 

 brighten a drear world, you have been rudely and 

 contemptuously treated as a thing of inept conceit, 

 of inflated importance, fit only to be disfigured and 

 crushed for your presumption. Herald of prospective 



