Mirror of the Months

by P. G. Patmore

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away—a sordid boon!”

And the consequence is, that, if we would know the true nature of those hearts, and the manner in which they are adapted to receive and act upon the impressions that come to them from external things, we must gain what we seek at secondhand; we must look into the records that have been copied from hearts that lived and beat ages ago; for in our own breasts we shall find only a blurred and scribbled sheet, or at best but a blank one. Even among our poets, the passions, characters, and events growing out of an over-civilized state of society, have usurped the place of those primary impulses and impressions in the susceptibility to receive which the poetical temperament mainly consists; and instead of Nature and her works being any longer the theme of our verse, these are only brought in as occasional aids and ornaments, to show off, not man as he essentially is in all time, but men as they accidentally are in the nineteenth century. It is true that one of our poets, and he the greatest, has nearly escaped the polluting influence of towns and cities. But in doing so, he has been compelled to take such close shelter within the citadel of his own heart, that his mental health has somewhat suffered from a want of due airing and exercise. And this it is which will, in a great measure, prevent his works from calling us back to that vigorous and healthful condition which they otherwise might. No, even Mr. Wordsworth himself has not been able, from the loopholes of his retreat, to take that kind of glance at “man, nature, and society,” which will enable him so to adapt himself to our wants as to do more than persuade us of their existence. To supply or set aside those wants will demand even a greater than he: unless indeed (as I fear) we are “hurt past all poetry,” and must look for a cure to that Nature alone which we have so long despised and outraged. But be this as it may, we are still able to feel what Nature is, though we have in a great measure ceased to know it; though we have chosen to neglect her ordinances, and absent ourselves from her presence, we still retain some instinctive reminiscences of her beauty and her power; and every now and then the sordid walls of those mud hovels which we have built for ourselves, and choose to dwell in, fall down before the magic touch of our involuntary fancies, and give us glimpses into “that imperial palace whence we came,” and make us yearn to return thither, though it be but in thought.

“Then sing ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!”

Meet me, then, gentle reader, here on this Village Green, and forgetting that there are such places as cities in the world, let us “do observance to a morn of May:” we shall find it almost as pleasant an employment as money-getting itself! From this spot we can observe specimens of many of those objects which are now in their fullest beauty, and which we were obliged to pass over at our last meeting.

The stately Horse-chestnut is in still greater perfection than it was last month—each of its pyramidal flowers looking like a “picture in little” of the great American Aloe. The Limes, too, that shade the lower windows of the Parsonage, and the Honeysuckles that make a little bower of its trellised doorway, are now in full leaf.

By the sunshine, which falls in bright patches on this broad walk leading to the Church, we may observe that the Elms are not as yet in full leaf; and casting our eyes upward, we shall see, through the intervals between the thinly spread leaves, spots of blue sky looking down upon us like a host of blue eyes. In the little Churchyard the graves are all covered with a flush of new green, spotted here and there with Daisies, which make even them look gay; the Ivy, which binds together the stones of the old belfry, is every where putting forth its young shoots; and the dark Yew itself, that shades the low porch, feels the influence of the season, and is once more putting on a look of green old age.

Let us now pass over the little stile that divides this sadly sweet inclosure from the adjacent paddock, and make our way into the open fields beyond. But what is this rich perfume, that comes floating past us as we go, borne on the warm breeze like incense? What but the sweet breath of the Hawthorn, blended (for those who have organs delicate enough to distinguish it) with that of the Violet, which grows about its roots, and steams up its plaintive odours from a crowd of hidden censers, till they reach the clouds of sweetness that are hanging above, and both are borne away together on the wings of every wind that passes. Those who are not accustomed to the harmony of scents, and cannot detect two or three together when they are blended in this manner, are exactly in the situation of those who are only susceptible of the melodies of music, and can hear nothing in harmony but a single sound.

One of the loveliest objects in the vegetable kingdom is a fine-grown Hawthorn tree, in the state in which we meet with it this month. But they are scarcely ever to be found in the open country, being of such extremely slow growth that they require particular advantages of soil, protection from the depredations of cattle, &c. before they can be made to reach the state of a tree. They are seldom to be met with in this state except in parks and pleasure-grounds; and even then they require to stand perfectly alone, or they do not gain that picturesque elegance of form on which so much of their beauty depends. There are some, I remember, both pink and white, in the deer-park of Maudlin College, that are a sight to look upon. The extreme beauty of this tree when in blossom arises partly from the delightful mixture of the leaves and blossoms together,—almost all the other trees that can properly be called flowering ones putting forth their blossoms before they have acquired sufficient green leaves to contrast with and set them off. There is another tree that we have not yet noticed, the Sycamore, the effect of which, when it is suffered to grow singly, is extremely elegant at this season.

Now, too, and not till now, the Oak, the Walnut, and the Mulberry begin to put forth their leaves, offering us, even till the commencement of June, a seeming renewal or lengthening out of the Spring, when all the rest of the vegetable world has put on the hues of Summer. The two first of these, however, have during the first fortnight of their vegetation the brown and golden hues of Autumn upon them.

But we must be more brief in our search after the beauties of May, or we shall not have space to name the half of them. Let us turn, then, towards our home inclosures; glancing, as we pass, at a few more of those sweet sights which belong to the fields exclusively. And first let us feed our eyes with the brilliant green of yonder Wheat-field. The stems, you see, have just attained height enough to wave gracefully in the wind; which, as it passes over them, seems to convert the whole into a beautiful lake of bright green undulating water. That Meadow which adjoins it, glittering all over with yellow King-cups, is no less bright and beautiful. It looks like the bed where Jupiter visited Danäe in a shower of gold. How pretty, too, are these Cowslips, starting up close beside our path, as if anxious to be seen, and yet hanging down their modest heads, as if afraid to meet the gaze that they seem to court.