FIELD FLOWERS 

 I 



THEY greet our steps without the city gates, on a gay 

 and eager carpet of many colours, which they wave 

 madly in the sun. It is evident that they were expect- 

 ing us. When the first bright rays of March appeared, the 

 Snowdrop or Winter-bell, the heroic daughter of the hoar- 

 frost, sounded the reveille. Next sprang from the earth ef- 

 forts, as yet shapeless, of a slumbering memory, vague ghosts 

 of flowers, pale flowers that are scarcely flowers at all: the 

 Three-fingered or Rue-leaved Saxifrage; the almost invisible 

 Shepherd's Purse; the Two-leaved Squill; the Bear's-foot, or 

 Stinking Hellebore; the Colt's-foot; the gloomy and poison- 

 ous Spurge Laurel: all of them ailing and sickly; undecided 

 pale-blue and pale-pink attempts; life's first fever, wherein 

 nature voids her malignant humours; anaemic captives re- 

 leased by Winter's hand ; convalescents from the subterranean 

 prisons ; timid and unskilled endeavours of the shrouded light. 

 But soon the light adventures into space; the nuptial 

 thoughts of the earth become clear and pure; the rough at- 



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