SUMMER’S LEASE 
61 
The only pity of it is that these crowded hours of 
glorious life are so fleet of passage; you have scarce 
welcomed the lordly gifts of the lilac when, hey presto ! 
they are gone, rusted like fairy gold before your very 
eyes. And so it is with all the rest; slow to come and 
quick to go are all these radiant visitants—orchard- 
bloom and hawthorn, wistaria, guelder rose, acacia, and 
laburnum. 
With the snows of yesteryear I am not over-much 
intrigued; it is the blossom-snows that I regret, the 
early bloom of the year’s morning, the irrecoverable 
spell of dawn. It is all but high noon now, and— 
summer’s a pleasant time; were it very ungracious, I 
wonder, while taking in both hands the bounties of the 
moment, to look with longing down the way she went, 
the way of Spring, the true Princesse Lointaine ? She 
passed this year so swiftly—so many months must come 
and go before she may return; in the meantime, it 
were well to make the most of summer’s lease, and take 
all possible pleasures from the fine pageant that is 
going by. 
The tall, rich lupins, white, purple, and blue, whose 
shining cohorts showed in such multitudinous array but 
a short while since, have shed their braveries, and once 
again descended to the dust, while clustered spires of 
blue and white Canterbury bells, campanulas, and 
majestic minarets of the delphinium now make merry 
in their room. 
Wonderfully rich and various of tone are these same 
towering spires of larkspur. Keats need have tripped 
no further than a full-blossomed border of them for the 
