NEWS OF SPRING 



multuous, drunk with dawns and noons, come the luminous 

 dancing bands of Summer's daughters ! Young maidens with 

 white veils and elderly spinsters in violet ribbons, school-girls 

 home for the holidays, first-communicants, pale nuns, dis- 

 hevelled romps, gossips and prudes. Here is the Marigold, 

 who breaks the green of the borders with her brightness. 

 Here is the Chamomile, like a nosegay of snow, beside her 

 unwearying brothers, the Garden Chrysanthemums, whom 

 we must not confuse with the Japanese Chrysanthemums of 

 Autumn. The Annual Helianthus, or Sunflower, towers like 

 a priest raising the monstrance over the lesser folk in prayer 

 and strives to resemble the orb which he adores. The Poppy 

 exerts himself to fill with light his cup torn by the morning 

 wind. The rough Larkspur, in his peasant's smock, who 

 thinks himself more beautiful than the sky, looks down upon 

 the Dwarf Convolvuluses, who reproach him spitefully with 

 putting too much blue into the azure of his flowers. The 

 Virginia Stock, arch and demure in her gown of jaconet, like 

 the little servant-maids of Dordrecht or Leyden, seems to wash 

 the borders of the beds with innocence. The Mignonette hides 

 herself in her laboratory and silently distils perfumes which 

 give us a foretaste of the air that is breathed on the threshold 



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