NEWS OF SPRING 



thousand smiles, bringing the health-giving brew in an earth- 

 enware bowl; the Pimpernel and the Coronilla, the cold Mint 

 and the purple Thyme, the Sainfoin and the Eyebright, the 

 Moon flower, or Ox-eye Daisy, the mauve Gentian and the 

 blue Verbena, the lance-shaped Horsetail, the Cinquefoil, or 

 Potentilla, the Greenweed, or Dyer's Broom. ... To tell 

 their names is to recite a poem of grace and light. We have 

 reserved for them the most charming, the purest, the clearest 

 sounds and all the musical gladness of the language. One 

 would think that they were the persons of a play, the dancers 

 and choristers of an immense fairy-scene, more beautiful, 

 more startling and more supernatural than the scenes that 

 unfold themselves on Prosperous Island, at the Court of 

 Theseus or in the Forest of Arden. And the fair actress in 

 this dumb and endless comedy — goddesses, angels, she-devils, 

 princesses and witches, virgins and courtezans, queens and 

 shepherd-girls — carry in the folds of their names the magic 

 sheen of innumerous dawns, of innumerous springtimes wit- 

 nessed by forgotten men, even as they also carry the memory of 

 thousands of deep or fleeting emotions which were felt before 

 them by generations that have disappeared, leaving no other 

 trace. 



[152] 



