Pastures beside the pacing brooks, soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, thymy slopes of down, overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea, crisp lawns, all dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving voices,—all these are summed in those simple words; and these are not all.
We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift in our own land, though still as we think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweetness, Shakespeare's peculiar joy would open on us more and more; yet we have it but in part. Go out in the springtime among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the root of the lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller Gentians, and the white Narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs, all veiled with blossoms—paths that forever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new-mown heaps filling all the air with fainter sweetness,—look up towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the Psalmist, "He maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains."
Then Aurora, the Sun's
Rosy handmaiden, runs
With a basket of fruit blossoms poised on her head,
Green ones and pink ones and white ones, and red,
And with both hands uplifted, outscatters them wide
Through gardens and orchards on every side,
Such abundance,
Redundance,