4 ^ 
NATURE NOTES. 
been accused of wilfully withdrawing himself from the public 
gaze. His utterances hav’e not been chorussed by reviewers, and 
indeed the appreciation that' has been expressed of him is 
but small : the best and truest, as it seems to me, is that which 
appeared in the Daily Chronicle on the 2nd of January last, from 
the pen of one in whose company I made the acquaintance last 
summer of Mr. Robert Bridges’ Shorter Poems. Until then I had 
only known the few verses cited with warm approval by Mr. 
Andrew Lang in his Letters in Literature. Even among the readers 
of Nature Notes ma}' be some who are still as ignorant as I 
was then ; if so, they will be grateful to me, as I am to him who 
first called my attention to the Shorter Poems. 
This, however, is neither the time nor the place for a detailed 
criticism of j\Ir. Bridges’ music. It is to one strain only that I 
would call attention. He sings well and truly of Nature in all 
seasons, but one, hitherto almost unsung, he has, as I have 
already said, made his own. This is early Spring — 
whnt time of year 
The thrush his singing has begun, 
Ere the first leaves appear. 
The poet must speak for himself ; and he shall do so in the 
verses which he calls “ Last Week of February, 1890 ” 
Hark to the merry birds, hark how they sing ! 
Although ’tis not yet Spring 
And keen the air ; 
Ilaie Winter, half resigning ere he go. 
Doth to his heiress show 
His kingdom fair. 
In patient lusset is his forest spread, 
All bright with bramble red. 
With beechen moss 
And holly sheen : the oak silver and stark 
.Sunneth his aged bark 
And wrinkled boss. 
But neath the ruin of the withered brake 
Primroses now awake 
From nursing shades : 
The crumpled carpet of the dry leaves brown 
Avails not to keep down 
The hyacinth blades. 
The hazel hath jiut forth his tassels ruffed ; 
The willow’s flossy tuft 
Hath slipped him free ; 
The rose amid her ransacked orange hips 
Braggeth the tender tips 
Of bowers to be. 
A black rook stirs the branches here and there, 
Foraging to repair 
His broken home : 
And hark, on the ash boughs 1 Never thrush did sing 
Louder in praise of Spring, 
\Vheir Spring is come. 
In assuring my readers that the little volume whence these 
lines are taken is full of pictures equally beautiful and true, I 
