THE HAWTHORN 
139 
Fear not, for the leaves will strew 
Gems in abundance upon you — 
.Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, 
.Against you come, some orient pearls unwept; 
* * * * * * 
Come, m^y Corinna ! come, and coming, mark 
How each field turns a street — each street a park, 
Made green and trimm’d with trees ! — see how 
Devotion gives each house a bough 
Or branch ! — each porch, each door, ere this 
An ark, a tabernacle is. 
Made up of whitethorn neatly interwove. 
As if here were those cooler shades of love. 
Can such delights be in the street 
And open fields, and we not see ’t? 
Come, we’ll abroad, and let’s obey 
The proclamation made for May. 
.And sin no more, as we have done, by staying, 
But, my Corinna! come, let’s go a-Maying.” 
The May-blossom, whose very name awakens pleasant 
remembrances of the vernal season, has ever been a fa- 
vourite object to all who delight in rural scenery. Its 
profusion, its sweetness, its blossoming in spring-time, all 
lay their claims to our regard. It is the loveliest flower 
of the loveliest month — the ornament of every hedge, of 
every glade. Its petals lie scattered over our pathway in 
each secluded lane, blown about by the winds, which are 
not yet soothed into their summer gentleness. 
The hawthorn is often merely a large bush, which, while 
young, grows very rapidly; but when trained, as it some- 
times is, into a tall tree, it is of slow growth, and the lapse 
of many years seems to make no change in its appearance. 
The traveller who, after a long absence, returns to gaze 
upon the hawthorn under whose shade he once sat, con- 
ning his lessons, or perchance musing idly upon the life 
Avhich then lay all before him, sees it now just such a 
tree as he left it. Many changes may have taken place 
in his home and his friends, and many natural objects 
may have changed too. The young larches, and oaks and 
ashes, which his own hands had planted, have grown 
