I SURMOUNT ALL DIFFICULTIES. 143 
How sweetly blooms 
Upon the slopes the azure blossom’d flax ! 
How wave the grassy seas of sheltered fields, 
Triumphant o’er the solitudes around, 
Less happy, where the cultivator’s hand, 
Creating, comes not. If to him belongs 
The name of benefactor of mankind, 
“ Who makes two blades of cheerful grass to grow 
Where but one grew before,” what meed is thine, 
Tyrwhitt, who, for the unprofitable heath. 
The lichen, and the worthless moss, that erst 
Crept o’er the hill, hast round thy highland home, 
A belt of generous verdure thrown, and bade 
A sweet oasis in the desert rise 
Upon the traveller’s admiring eye ? 
I SURMOUNT ALL DIFFICULTIES. 
MISTLETOE. 
All your temples strow 
With laurel green, and sacred mistletoe. 
GAY. 
The mistletoe is a parasitical plant, growing 
chiefly on the summit of fruit trees, though 
the proud oak sometimes becomes its slave, 
and yields its own substance to support it. 
“ The Druids sent round their attendant 
youths with branches of the mistletoe, to an¬ 
nounce the entrance of the new year; ” and 
something like this custom is said still to 
be continued in France; and our English 
