HA WTHORN. 
67 
“ In merry Spring-tide, 
When to woo his bride 
The nightingale comes again, 
Thy boughs among 
He warbles his song, 
That lightens a lover’s pain. 
***** 
“Gentle hawthorn, thrive, 
And, for ever alive, 
May’st thou blossom as now in thy prime: 
By the wind unbroke, 
And the thunder-stroke, 
Unspoiled by the axe of time.” 
Chaucer thus sings of it: 
“ Furth goth all the Courte, both most and lest, 
To fetche the fiouris freshe, and braunche and blome 
And namely hauthorne brought both page and grome, 
With freshe garlandis partly blew and white, 
And than rejoisin in their grete delight. 
“ Amongst the many buds proclaiming May 
(Decking the meads in holiday array, 
Striving who shall surpass in bravery) 
Mark the fair blooming of the hawthorn tree; 
Who, finely clothed in a robe of white, 
Feeds full the wanton eye with May’s delight, 
Yet for the bravery that she is in 
Doth neither handle card nor wheel to spin, 
Nor changeth robes but twice; is never seen 
In other colours than in white or green. 
Learn then, content, young shepherd, from this tree, 
Whose greatest wealth is Nature’s livery.” 
Spenser tells us in his “ Shepherd’s Calendar,” 
“ Youth’s folk now flocken everywhere, 
To gather may-baskets and smelling breere; 
And home they hasten the posts to dight, 
And all the kirk-pillars ere daylight, 
With hawthorn-buds, and sweet eglantine, 
And garlands of roses, and sops-in-wine.” 
Herrick, in his “ Hesperides,” has a beautiful idyll 
descriptive of the manner in which maids went a-Maying, 
