APRIL 8s 



and blinking in the sunshine. I have a double-flowered 

 scarlet Bock-rose, not figured in any of my books, and 

 which I have rarely seen in gardens. It flowers persist- 

 ently for many months. 



April nth. — We have had lately a severely cold week 

 — Blackthorn winter indeed. How the poor garden 

 shrivels and shrinks, and seems to lose all its colour ! 



Many years ago, in a volume of Tennyson given me by 

 Owen Meredith, he wrote on the fly-leaf the following little 

 poem, fuU of sympathy for the gardener : — 



In Nature can aught be unnatural ? 



If so, it is surely the frost, 

 That Cometh by night and spreadeth death's pall 

 On the promise of summer which spring hath lost. 

 In a clear spring night 

 Such a frost pass'd light 

 Over the budding earth, like a ghost. 



But the flowers that perish'd 



Were those alone 

 ■Which, in haste to be cherish'd 

 And loved and known, 



Had too soon to the sun all their beauty shown. 

 Lightly vested. 

 Amorous-breasted 

 Blossom of almond, blossom of peach — 



Impatient children, with hearts unsteady, 

 So young, and yet more precocious each 



Than the leaves of the summer, and blushing already 

 These perished because too soon they lived ; 

 But the oak-flower, self -restrained, survived ; 



' If the sun would win me,' she thought, ' he must 



Wait for me, wooing me warmly the while ; 

 For a flower's a fool, if a flower would trust 

 Her whole sweet being to one first smUe.' 



