An Omen. 1 1 



wave in the later spring and summer — the loveliest 

 colour against the green of the hedge itself. Surely 

 I am lucky in such an omen, and the fairies may visit 

 my garden for their own purposes under the moon- 

 light, for they are not all dead yet. Little common 

 daisies ope their golden eyes, and sometimes, I think, 

 wink and beckon, as if they had some secret to tell. 

 And this I feel the more as the daisy, as an everlast- 

 ing, knows no seasons and has its secrets accordingly. 



" The rose is but a summer flower, 

 The daisy never dies." 



Honeysuckle struggles upwards, and the white con- 

 volvulus puts forth its fairy trumpets, those flowers of 

 a day, as the French call them, that are born at morn, 

 fall off at eve, but are so soon succeeded by others that 

 we do not notice their loss ; and they mix deliciously 

 with the red thorn with which here and there breaks 

 in the hedge have been filled up. Ferns of many kinds 

 wave in a rough rockery built up in the corner, which 

 erstwhile was a rubbish heap ; and wild violets peep 

 through with their gentle eyes, and wild hyacinths, 

 blue and even white, and anemones have condescended 

 to blossom, and to impart a touch of lady-like delicacy, 

 grace, and purity, that my corner might not fail of the 

 most exquisite variety. If fortune favours me, I shall 

 try to settle some droseras in a shallow wooden box 

 on the rockery slope, and conduct a little jet of water to 

 flow and spread above them, and then my little corner 

 will, to my mind, be finished. But, alas ! here as in 

 other things, the final touch is the hardest to succeed 

 in, and there remains the necessity of constant effort. 

 Well, perhaps, that it is so, for else one would fall to 

 drowse in a dull content. A botanist might, perhaps 



