"Barren as the sand on the sea-sure,"
is felt, and not is expected or looked four but the rich harvest of the ocean's wondrous things cast on the shingle, or left in the pools beyond. The immediate banks and links of the sea-side are usually treeless, and, to non-observant eyes, dreary wastes; but not a spot on this wide world is without its interest and beauty, and delightful it is, when rambling along the sandy beach, listening to the music of the waves on the pebbly shore, to find how many lovely blossoms are scattered even here, ornamenting the rugged sides of the chalky cliff or rock, weaving a flowery tapestry over the sloping links, and binding together with interlaced roots the loose substance of many a sand-bank.
Unlike the country meadows, where the loveliest blossoms appear with the earliest sunshine of the year, the fairest sea-side flowers are to be gathered during the summer and autumn months; though even in spring, the turf which enamels the links, down often to the water's edge, will be found decked with an occasional early blossom,
"As if the rainbows of the first fresh spring
Had blossomed where they fell."
While, at all seasons of the year, here as elsewhere,
"Daisies with their pinky lashes"
raise their glad faces to the sun:
"On waste and woodland, rock and plain.
Its bumble buds unheeded rise;
The rose has but a summer reign—
The daisy never dies."
The first gleam of spring sunshine is, however, reflected not only by the silver daisy, but by that "sunflower of the spring," the golden dandelion, which glitters as early as April on the sandy, grassy slope, familiar to all, and common everywhere. The leaves of the dandelion grow from the root; they are deeply cut and notched, and from this have gained their name, which we English have corrupted from the French dent-de-lion. The Scotch call the dandelion the hawkweed gowan. The leaves are much eaten on the continent for salad, and a medicine is extracted from the root. Every one is familiar [{622}] with the downy ball that succeeds the flower:
"The dandelion with globe of down,
The school-boy's clock in every town.
Which the truant puff's amain,
To conjure lost hours back again."