When first the soul of Love is sent abroad,
Warm through the vital air, and on the heart
Harmonious seizes, the gay troops begin,
In gallant thought, to plume the painted wing,
And try again the long-forgotten strain,
At first faint warbled. But no sooner grows
The soft infusion prevalent and wide,
Than all alive at once their joy o’erflows
In music unconfined. Up springs the Lark,
Shrill voiced and loud, the messenger of morn;
Ere yet the shadows fly, he mounted sings
Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunt
Calls up the tuneful nations. Every copse
Deep tangled, tree irregular, and bush
Bending with dewy moisture o’er the heads
Of the coy quoristers that lodge within,
Are prodigal of harmony. The Thrush
And Woodlark, o’er the kind contending throng
Superior heard, run through the sweetest length
Of notes, when listening Philomela deigns
To let them joy, and purposes, in thought
Elate, to make her night excel their day.
The Blackbird whistles from the thorny brake,
The mellow Bullfinch answers from the grove.
Nor are the Linnets, o’er the flowering furze
Pour’d out profusely, silent. Joined to these
Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade
Of newsprung leaves, their modulations mix,
Mellifluous. The Jay, the Rook, the Daw,
And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone,
Aid the full concert, while the Stockdove breathes
A melancholy murmur through the whole.
Around our heads the whitewinged Plover wheels
Her sounding flight, and then directly on,
In long excursion, skims the level lawns,
To tempt him from her nest. The Wild Duck hence:
O’er the rough moss and o’er the trackless waste
The Heath Hen flutters, pious fraud, to lead
The hot pursuing Spaniel far astray!
Thomson.
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Yellow Star of Bethlehem. Tragopogon pratensis.
Dedicated to St. Yvo.
May 23.
St. Julia, 5th Cent. St. Desiderius, Bp. of Langres, 7th Cent. St. Desiderius, Bp. of Vienne, A. D. 612.
Whitsuntide.
Mr. Fosbroke remarks that this feast was celebrated in Spain with representations of the gift of the Holy Ghost, and of thunder from engines, which did much damage. Wafers, or cakes, preceded by water, oak-leaves, or burning torches, were thrown down from the church roof; small birds, with cakes tied to their legs, and pigeons were let loose; sometimes there were tame white ones tied with strings, or one of wood suspended. A long censer was also swung up and down. In an old Computus, anno 1509, of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, we have ivs. viid. paid to those playing with the great and little angel and the dragon; iiis. paid for little cords employed about the Holy Ghost; ivs. vid. for making the angel (thurificantis) censing, and iis. iid. for cords of it—all on the feast of Pentecost. On the day before Whitsuntide, in some places, men and boys rolled themselves, after drinking, &c. in the mud in the streets. The Irish kept the feast with milk food, as among the Hebrews; and a breakfast composed of cake, bread, and a liquor made by hot water poured on wheaten bran. The Whitson Ales were derived from the Agapai, or love-feasts of the early Christians, and were so denominated from the churchwardens buying, and laying in from presents also, a large quantity of malt, which they brewed into beer, and sold out in the church or elsewhere. The profits, as well as those from sundry games, there being no poor rates, were given to the poor, for whom this was one mode of provision, according to the christian rule that all festivities should be rendered innocent by alms. Aubrey thus describes a Whitson Ale. “In every parish was a church-house, to which belonged spits, crocks, and other utensils for dressing provisions. Here the housekeepers met. The young people were there too, and had dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, &c. the ancients sitting gravely by, and looking on.” It seems too that a tree was erected by the church door, where a banner was placed, and maidens stood gathering contributions. An arbour, called Robin Hood’s Bower, was also put up in the church-yard. The modern Whitson Ale consists of a lord and lady of the ale, a steward, sword-bearer, purse-bearer, mace-bearer, train-bearer, or page, fool, and pipe and tabor man, with a company of young men and women, who dance in a barn.