JUNE.
The shepherds, now, from every walk and steep,
Where grateful feed attracts the dainty sheep,
Collect their flocks, and plunge them in the streams
And cleanse their fleeces in the noontide beams.
This care perform’d, arrives another care
To catch them, one by one, their wool to shear:
Then come the tying, clipping, tarring, bleating;
The shearers’ final shout, and dance, and eating.
From hence the old engravers sometimes made
This lovely month a shearer, at his trade:
And hence, the symbol to the season true,
A living hand so traces June to you.
The “Mirror of the Months,” the pleasantest of “the year-books,” except “The Months” of Mr. Leigh Hunt, tells us that with June,—“Summer is come—come, but not to stay; at least, not at the commencement of this month: and how should it, unless we expect that the seasons will be kind enough to conform to the devices of man, and suffer themselves to be called by what name and at what period he pleases? He must die and leave them a legacy (instead of they him) before there will be any show of justice in this. Till then the beginning of June will continue to be the latter end of May, by rights; as it was according to the old style. And, among a thousand changes, in what one has the old style been improved upon by the new? Assuredly not in that of substituting the utile for the dulce, in any eyes but those of almanac-makers. Let all lovers of spring, therefore, be fully persuaded that, for the first fortnight in June, they are living in May. We are to bear in mind that all shall thus be gaining instead of losing, by the impertinence of any breath, but that of heaven, attempting to force spring into summer, even in name alone.”
It seems fitting thus to introduce the following passages, and invite the reader to proceed with the author, and take a bird’s eye view of the season.
Spring may now be considered as employed in completing her toilet, and, for the first weeks of this month, putting on those last finishing touches which an accomplished beauty never trusts to any hand but her own. In the woods and groves also, she is still clothing some of her noblest and proudest attendants with their new annual attire. The oak until now has been nearly bare; and, of whatever age, has been looking old all the winter and spring, on account of its crumpled branches and wrinkled rind. Now, of whatever age, it looks young, in virtue of its new green, lighter than all the rest of the grove. Now, also, the stately walnut (standing singly or in pairs in the fore-court of ancient manor-houses, or in the home corner of the pretty park-like paddock at the back of some modern Italian villa, whose white dome it saw rise beneath it the other day, and mistakes for a mushroom,) puts forth its smooth leaves slowly, as “sage grave men” do their thoughts; and which over-caution reconciles one to the beating it receives in the autumn, as the best means of at once compassing its present fruit, and making it bear more; as its said prototypes in animated nature are obliged to have their brains cudgelled, before any good can be got from them.