88 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
from the people : white wood anemone, the spirit of the 
spring breezes ; the pilewort, and the celandine that 
Wordsworth loved. On the edges blue speedwells peep 
up in cloudy clusters; the chickweed and the cuckoo 
flower show their silver petals; the daisies sprinkle the 
sward with millions of wdiite starry eyes; and the butter¬ 
cups wreathe and twine over the green mounds, the 
forest dimples, the grey stones, and the graves of a 
former summer's beauty. And amid them all— 
“ The silver streams go singing in fine lines— 19 
splashing, trickling, washing banks of moss where hare¬ 
bells, yet unfolded, cluster; creeping through reedy 
banks, where the water fowl learn maternal joys; past 
grassy meadows that swell with fatness, and beneath 
broad, arching boughs, where a thousand wild birds con¬ 
gregate amid the leafy darkness : — 
“ The Winter with his grisly storms no longer durst abide, 
The pleasant grass with lusty green the earth hath newly dyed; 
The trees have leaves, the boughs do spread, new changed is the 
year, 
The water-brooks are clean sunk down, the pleasant boughs ap¬ 
pear; 
The Spring is come, the goodly nymphs now dance in every place ;— 
Thus hath the year most pleasantly of late changed her face/* 
Earl Surrey. 
More glorious still w r hen the gardens heap up their crim¬ 
son foam, and apple orchards brim over with blossoms; 
when the green corn waves high above the furrows, 
playing with every wind that skips over the field, and 
clustering in thick patches round the skylark's nest. 
