I cannot reproach myself on this score. I have loved and learnt by heart every shape and development, from the first vivid light of green to the sombre sameness of hue, and then the rich variety that dispersed this;—all this growth, and attainment, and decay have I heedfully and affectionately noted, during the space which separated last year’s bare boughs from these.
“A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime.”
Yes, I saw that,—and I watched the juicy foliage deepen, and the thin maize-coloured strips of flower chequer the darkening full mass, and change the picture into
“The lime, a summer home of murmurous wings.”
Then those curved chesnut boughs near the grass—I detected the first fresh crumpled gleam, bursting from the brown sticky buds, until all over the tree, as in an illumination,
“The budding twigs spread out their fan
To catch the breezy air.”
And so I watched them into milky spires, and swarthy green globes, that grew brown, and fell, and burst threefold, lying among the heaped leaves, such a picture, with the white lining and bright nut!
The beech, changing from soft silky fledging of its boughs into hardier green foliage, and afterwards becoming a very mint, each branch
“All overlaid with patines of bright gold”;
and so subsiding into a sparer dress of sienna brown.