Wild Flowers—A Hedgerow in July—Hedgerows in General—In Woodland and Copse—In Fields and in Moorlands.
“Ye wildlings of Nature, I doat upon you,
For ye waft me to summers of old,
When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight.
And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold.”
Campbell.
“Fair, my own darling, are the flowers in spring...
Rathe primrose, violet, and eglantine,
Anemone and golden celandine.
Not less delicious all the birds that sing
Carols of joy upon the amorous wing,
Earine, in these sweet hours of thine.”
Mortimer Collinz (to his wife).
From the day we started from the tree-clad plains of bird-haunted Berks till that on which, after crossing the wild Grampian range, we rolled into the capital of the Scottish Highlands, the Wanderer was gay interiorly with wild and garden flowers.
Did we purchase these flowers? Never once, for, strange as it may seem, I do not think that I ever left a town or village or humblest hamlet without having a bouquet or two presented to me.
Nor were the persons who brought those flowers always such as one would feel inclined to associate with the poetry that floated around their floral gifts.
A rosebud or a lily, in the fair fingers of a beautiful girl, is idyllic; it is in keeping with nature. But what say you to a bunch of sweet-scented carnations, pinks, and lilac pea-blooms trailing over the toil-tinted fingers of some rustic dame of forty?
Would you not accept the latter almost as readily as the former? Yes, you would, especially if she said,—
“Have a few flowers, sir? I know you are fond of them.”
Especially if you knew that a great kindly lump of a heart was beating under a probably not over-fashionable corset, and a real living soul peeping out through a pair of merry laughing eyes.
But rough-looking men, ay, even miners, also brought me flowers.