40 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES* 
How, but at that awakening season, when 
“ The cladded earth goes up in sweet breathed flowers j 
In music dies poor human speech, 
And into beauty blow these hearts of ours. 
When love is bom in each.” 
Alexander Smith.* 
It is this passion, dawning in the Season of Buttercups, 
which gives new life to the heart of the most timid 
creature; works a change in the attitude and habit of 
the most courageous and the most retiring; gives the 
quadruped his noblest bearing, and the bird his brightest 
plumage; makes the creature, which before was startled 
at the falling of a leaf, or the dancing of its own shadow, 
energetic, affectionate, and fearless; brings out the 
highest capabilities of the meanest and most despised, 
and makes even a sparrow musical. There is the bonny 
lark,—dweller on the brown earth, companion of the 
daisy, a little tawny bird, shy, and crouching in the dust 
—Love lifts him up into the blue heavens to beat his 
wings against the morning star, and drown the voices of 
angels with his torrent of song :— 
u Seeming to rain down music from his wings, 
And bathe his plumage in a fount of light.” 
It carries him on the wings of a wild passion away into 
68 — - -— the abysses dim 
Of lornest space, in whose deeps regally 
Suns and their bright broods swim ; n 
and makes him the companion of the sunshine and the 
amber cloud, all the while warbling to his bride as she 
sits brooding and listening under the shelter of the bents. 
