Cardamines! Cardamines!
Thine hour is when the thrushes sing,
When gently stirs the vernal breeze,
When earth and sky proclaim the spring;
When all the fields melodious ring
With cuckoos' calls, when all the trees
Put on their green, then art thou king
Of butterflies, Cardamines.
What though thine hour be brief, for thee
The storms of winter never blow,
No autumn gales shall scorn the lea,
Thou scarce shalt feel the summer's glow;
But soaring high or flitting low,
Or racing with the awakening bees
For spring's first draughts of honey—so
Thy life is passed, Cardamines.
Cardamines! Cardamines!
E'en among mortal men I wot
Brief life while spring-time quickly flees
Might seem a not ungrateful lot:
For summer's rays are scorching hot
And autumn holds but summer's lees,
And swift in autumn is forgot
The winter comes, Cardamines.
So well pleased were we with this little lyric that we read it aloud two or three times over to each other: for it was a hot summer's day when the early, freshness and bloom is over and the foliage takes on a deeper, almost sombre green; and it brought back to us the vivid spring feeling, the delight we had so often experienced on seeing again the orange-tip, that frail delicate flutterer, the loveliest, the most spiritual, of our butterflies.
Oddly enough, the very thing which, one supposes, would spoil a lyric about any natural object—the use of a scientific instead of a popular name, with the doubling and frequent repetition of it—appeared in this instance to add a novel distinction and beauty to the verses.
The end of our talk on the subject was a suggestion I made that it would be a nice act on her part to follow Longman's lead and write a little nature poem for the next number of the magazine. This she said she would do if I on my part would promise to follow her poem with one by me, and I said I would.
Accordingly her poem, which I transcribe, made its appearance in the next number.
MY MOOR
Purple with heather, and golden with gorse,
Stretches the moorland for mile after mile;
Over it cloud-shadows float in their course,—
Grave thoughts passing athwart a smile,—
Till the shimmering distance, grey and gold,
Drowns all in a glory manifold.
O the blue butterflies quivering there,
Hovering, flickering, never at rest,
Quickened flecks of the upper air
Brought down by seeing the earth so blest;
And the grasshoppers shrilling their quaint delight
At having been born in a world so bright!