Dense levies of orchises empurple the meadows, where the butterflies hasten their wavering flight; the sunlight breathes through the pale-leafed woods; and the air is sweet with the scent of the spring, and loud with the humming of wings....
It lasts but a week—a fleeting mood of dainty gaiety; a quick discarding of the brown shabbiness of winter for a smiling array of white and gold, fresh-green, and turquoise-blue....
And then, it has flitted, and through the long, parched months relentlessly blazes the summer sun.
IN THE LONG GRASS
A mysterious, impenetrable jungle of green stems, quivering with the play of a myriad baby shadows. A close crowd of flowers—naïve-faced, white-cheeked daisies; buttercups, glistening gold; dandelions like ragged medallions; stubbly bearded thistles; sleek-stalked orchises, white, and mauve, and purple; corpulent, heavy-leafed clover, and skinny ragged robin. And, topping them all, the languidly nodding heads of a thousand seeded grasses, and the dishevelled crests of the red sorrel....
A ceaseless humming of wings—deep-toned and solemn, cheerily bustling, high-pitched and idle....
Hidden in the green-stemmed jungle, a world of creatures silently busy—hurrying ants; heavy, gray cockchafers, drowsily lumbering; tiny, red spiders, fidgeting from blade to blade; grasshoppers, with their great sensitive eyes, humanly expressive; shiny, black beasts, wriggling their scuttling bodies; fierce-looking flying things, their vivid red bodies, now poised motionless, now darting capriciously to and fro.
One after another they come for a peep at me. A pair of blue-bottles, chasing one another, dash past; a furry bee chaunts lustily as he bustles from flower to flower; and dark, evil-looking flies hover, hanging their long, sneaking legs....