A FEAST OF WILD STRAWBERRIES 



our array how vast ! of gold plate, then are we 

 kings indeed. 



I'll give you joy of all your hot -house fruit, if you'll 

 leave me to my Wild Strawberries. I'll wish you pleasure 

 of Signer What's-his-name, the violin player, if you'll 

 but listen to my choir of thrushes. What do you care 

 to eat ? Here's nothing over substantial, I'll admit ; 

 but there's good wine in the brook, and food for a day 

 in the fields and hedges. Nuts, Blackberries, Wortle- 

 berries, Wild Raspberries, Mushrooms, Crabs and Sloes, 

 and Samphire for preserving ; Elderberries to make 

 into a cordial ; and Wild Strawberries, that's my 

 chiefest dish at this season food for princesses. 



Come to the cliffs with your leaf of Wild Straw- 

 berries, and I can show you blue Flax, and Sea Pinks, 

 yellow Sea-Cabbage, and Sea Convolvulus, and Golden 

 Samphire ; you shall have Sandwort, and Viper's 

 Bugloss, and Ploughman's Spikenard, and Horned 

 Poppies, and Thyme, in plenty. We will choose a 

 fanciful flower for the table, the yellow Elecampane 

 that gave a cosmetic to Helen of Troy. And the men- 

 tion of her who set Olympus and Earth in a blaze of 

 discord makes me remember how Hermes, of the golden 

 wand, gave to Odysseus the plant he had plucked from 

 the ground, black at the root, and with a flower like to 

 milk " Moly the Gods call it, but it is hard for mortal 

 men to dig ; howbeit with the Gods all things are 

 possible." 



Any manner of imaginings may come to those who 

 make a feast of Wild Strawberries. We may follow 

 our Classic idea and discuss the Hydromel, or cider of 

 the Greeks ; the syrup of squills they drank to aid their 

 digestion, or the absinthe they took to promote appetite. 

 We might ev^n try to make one of their sweet wines of 

 Rose leaves and honey, such a thing would go well 



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