That is the saddest of thoughts-as we grow older the romance fades, and all things become commonplace. Half our lives are spent in wishing for to-morrow, the other half in wishing for yesterday. Wild-flowers alone never become commonplace. The white wood-sorrel at the foot of the oak, the violet in the hedge of the vale, the thyme on the wind-swept downs, they were as fresh this year as last, as dear to-day as twenty years since, even dearer, for they grow now, as it were, in the earth we have made for them of our hopes, our prayers, our emotions, our thoughts. -Richard Jeffries. In these vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake of her rejoicing with heaven and earth. -Milton. How happy the trees must be to hear the song of birds again in their branches! After the silence and the leaflessness, to have the birds back once more and to feel them busy at the nest-building; how glad to give them the moss and fibres and the crutch of the boughs to build in! -Richard Jeffries. Turn, turn my wheel! All life is brief; What now is bud will soon be leaf, What now is leaf will soon decay; The wind blows east, the wind blows west; Will soon have wings and beak and breast, -Longfellow. For winter's rains and ruins are over, The light that loses, the night that wins; And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent spray's edge That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first, fine careless rapture! -Browning. 'Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May. |