United States or Germany ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Out of the dark earth he thus brings all the lovely green things of the spring, and clothes the world with beauty, and sets the waters running, and the birds singing, and the lambs bleating, and the children gathering daisies and butter-cups, and the gladness overflowing in all hearts very different from what we see now isn't it, Ranald?"

In a little opening there was a bank embroidered with daisies and butter-cups; a little row of willows bending their heads forward, formed a kind of canopy; and directly before it, there was a vista through the trees, which afforded a distant prospect of the sea, with every here and there a vessel passing along, and the beams of the setting sun quivered on the waves.

On the green turf before him where butter-cups speckled the ground with golden blossoms, was a little group of four persons busily engaged and wholly oblivious of the differences which divided the masters of the two estates.

The old oaks stretch out their arms in vain. Grove whispers to grove, and the robin stops to listen, but the child plays on. He bruises the happy butter-cups, he crushes the quivering anemone, and his cruel fingers are stained with the harebell's purple blood.

On a lovely afternoon towards the middle of May, when city men begin to thirst for a draught of fresh air, and to long for an undignified roll on the green fields among primroses, butter-cups, and daisies, Mr Sudberry sat at his desk reading the advertisements in the Times. Suddenly he flung the paper away, hit the desk a sounding blow with his clinched fist, and exclaimed firmly "I'll do it!"

The butter-cups were over all the hills, for children to put under their chins, and pea-blossoms, very much like lady-slippers, swayed prettily in the wind. Beneath the feet of the boy and girl she was a merry, bright-eyed child! how I love her still! broke crocuses and violets, and a thousand wild flowers, fresh and full of fairy beauty.

On this day the he-goat had two chains around his neck one was made of butter-cups and the other was made of daisies, and the children wondered to each other who it was could have woven these so carefully. They asked the he-goat this question, but he only looked at them and did not say a word. The children liked examining this goat's eyes; they were very big, and of the queerest light-gray colour.

The meadows are clothed with fresh grass, butter-cups and daisies are in blossom, and larks sing in the olive-trees. Now and then, we passed a casa del campo, with its front half buried in orange-trees, over which towered two or three sentinel palms.

Around Tibbie and Annie however the daisies were shining back to the sun, confidently, with their hearts of gold and their rays of silver. And the butter-cups were all of gold; and the queen-of-the-meadow, which grew tall at the water-side, perfumed the whole region with her crown of silvery blossom.

"Miriam has really a vulgar taste for Nature, as Miss Glen calls it," Evelyn said one day, with a curl of her slight, exquisite lip as she shook away from her painted muslin robe, the butter-cups, heavy with moisture and radiant with sunshine, which I had laid upon her knee.