The Purple Crocus 



would be merely trivial in the Purple 

 Crocus. You would no more wish to 

 see it there than to see the Madonna 

 in the graceful attitudes of a dancer. 

 For bright as the Purple Crocus may- 

 appear at times, I cannot but think 

 that its deepest expression is one of 

 quiet and repose. It may be beautiful 

 in the broad mid-day sunshine, but not 

 with its fullest beauty. Go into the 

 Nottingham meadows, where the plant 

 grows wild, some warm afternoon in 

 March, when the dreamy sun has 

 just strength to unfold the petals, and 

 look at the broad pale sheets of lilac 

 bloom outspread upon the early grass, 

 whose sweet young green is only just 

 beginning to recover from the winter's 

 frost, the blooms here thin and scattered, 

 hardly to be distinguished from water 

 left by the retiring floods, and here 

 varied with the dark green flowerless 

 patches of the Autumn Crocus.^ In that 

 distant colour it can never be surpassed ; 

 we see it in the fulness of its glory. 

 Approach too near, and the enchant- 

 ment vanishes. The fair ranks are now 



' [The author means the Colchicum auiumnale, though 

 this is not a Crocus. — H. N. E.] 



33 c 



