NEWS OF SPRING 



represents all their ingenuous and visible soul. It hides itself, 

 stoops, rises to the ear even as those who bear it lie concealed, 

 bend forward, or stand erect in the corn and in the grass. 



These are the few names that are known to all of us ; we 

 do not know the others, though their music describes with 

 the same gentleness, the same happy genius, flowers which 

 we see by every wayside and upon all the paths. Thus, at 

 this moment, that is to say at the end of the month in which 

 the ripe corn falls beneath the reaper's sickle, the banks of 

 the roads are a pale violet: it is the sweet and gentle Scabious, 

 who has blossomed at last, discreet, aristocratically poor and 

 modestly beautiful, as her title, that of a mist-veiled precious 

 stone, proclaims. Around her, a treasure lies scattered: it 

 is the Ranunculus, or Buttercup, who has two names, even as 

 he has two lives ; for he is at once the virgin innocent who cov- 

 ers the grass with sunflake and the fearsome and venomous 

 wizard who deals out death to heedless animals. Again we 

 have the Yarrow and the Sneezewort, little flowers, once use- 

 ful, that march along the roads like silent school-girls, clad 

 in a dull uniform; the vulgar and innumerous Bird's Ground- 

 sel; her big brother, the Lamb's Lettuce of the fields; then the 

 dangerous Black Nightshade; the Bitter-sweet, who hides 



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