The Strife of March 17 



of the turf are green and thriving, and full of thyme- 

 plants and other dormant blossoms, the taller blades 

 and tufts are almost all colourless and dead. When 

 the larks nest under the shelter of these dry locks 

 in May, the new spring growth will have tinged the 

 sward beneath them, and colour will partly creep 

 back into many of the old, dry blades. But while the 

 hills stand spread under the strong lights of spring, 

 without any of its verdure, their colours seem less 

 appropriate to England than to some sun-bitten 

 landscape of the south. 



Because of their very rarity the touches of colour 

 that the March sun wakes in the fields seem doubly 

 vivid. The lesser celandine has a liberal growth of 

 glossy verdure ; even before its bronze buds open 

 into gold, it adds a lusty yet delicate beauty to the 

 beaten mould by the marbled grey and green of its 

 down-pressed leaves. But it is characteristic of the 

 other flowers of March that they concentrate all their 

 activity on the vital function of bloom, and are con- 

 tent to wait upon the general advance of the season 

 for the unfolding of their foliage. They flash into 

 the early strife of the year like blades stripped from 

 their scabbards. It is not until the wind-bleached 

 clods of March are crumbled and softened by the 

 April rain that the cobwebbed leaves of the colt's-foot 

 begin to unroll beneath its tassels of tarnished 

 bloom. Round the fringe of all great cities the 

 country seems to lay siege to the urban grime in 

 spring, and to press home its healing cleanness much 

 closer to the darkened core. In this annual attack 

 the colt's-foot blossom is indomitably to the front. 

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