HOURS OF SPRING. 5 
and plants put on purpose for it. They were dead, the 
whole race of them, and these their skeletons were as 
dust under my feet. Nature sets no value upon life 
neither of minute hill-snail nor of human being. 
I thought myself so much to the earliest leaf and the 
first meadow orchis—so important that I should note 
the first zee-zee of the titlark—that I should pronounce 
it summer, because now the oaks were green; I must 
not miss a day nor an hour in the fields lest something 
should escape me. How beautiful the droop of the great 
brome-grass by the wood! But to-day I have to listen 
to the lark’s song—not out of doors with him, but through 
the window-pane, and the bullfinch carries the rootlet fibre 
to his nest without me. They manage without me very 
well; they know their times and seasons—not only the 
civilised rooks, with their libraries of knowledge in their 
old nests of reference, but the stray things of the hedge 
and the chiffchaff from over sea in the ash wood. They 
goon without me. Orchis flower and cowslip—I can- 
not number them all—TI hear, as it were, the patter of 
their feet— flower and bud and the beautiful clouds that 
go over, with the sweet rush of rain and burst of sun 
glory among the leafy trees. They go on, and I am 
no more than the least of the empty shells that strewed 
the sward of the hill. Nature sets no value upon life, 
neither of mine nor of the larks that sang years ago. 
The earth is all in all to me, but I am nothing to the » 
earth: it is bitter to know this before you are dead. 
These delicious violets are sweet for themselves ; they 
_ were not shaped and coloured and gifted with that ex- 
quisite proportion and adjustment of odour and hue for 
me. High up against the grey cloud I hear the lark 
through the window singing, and each note falls into my 
heart like a knife. 
