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


May expands to its prime of beauty; the summer birds come with the fruit-blossoms, the gardens are deluged with bloom and the air with melody, while in the woods the timid spring-flowers fold themselves away in silence and give place to a brighter splendor.

"Have hatte of floures fresh as May, Chapelett of roses of Whitsunday, For sich array be costeth but lite." In Italy the festival is designated "Pasqua Rosata," from falling at a time when roses are in bloom, while in Germany the peony is the Pentecost rose. Herrick tells us it was formerly the practice to use birch and spring-flowers for decorative purposes at Whitsuntide:

Hidden away among Flora's most precious treasures is a faded bunch of spring-flowers, tied with a thread broken from the fringe of the plaid on which her brother sat that day; and looking at them now, she knows that when Hamish took them from her hand, and kissed and blessed her with loving looks, it was with the thought in his heart of the long parting drawing near.

The woods were just bursting into leaf; the spring-flowers filled the air with odor, and chequered the green foliage and grass; the whole scene was full of vernal freshness, life, and beauty. The track which the Jamesons had followed was about midway between the northern and southern routes generally pursued by emigrants, and it was quite unlikely that others would cross the river at that point.

Breakfast being over and mass attended, the school-bell rang and the rooms filled: a very pretty spectacle was presented in classe. Pupils and teachers sat neatly arrayed, orderly and expectant, each bearing in her hand the bouquet of felicitation the prettiest spring-flowers all fresh, and filling the air with their fragrance: I only had no bouquet.

He had preached two extemporary sermons every Sunday at the workhouse, where a room had been fitted up for divine service, pending the alterations in the church; and had walked the same evening to a cottage at one or other extremity of his parish to deliver another sermon, still more extemporary, in an atmosphere impregnated with spring-flowers and perspiration.

"Josie," she cried excitedly, springing off her pony, "they're coming. I saw them up the trail." She tossed her flowers on the table and hurried to arrange them in basins, cups, old tin cans, and all available vessels, till the whole house seemed to be running over with those first and most exquisite prairie spring-flowers.

It is difficult, as we have already noted in a previous chapter, to discover why some of our sweetest and fairest spring-flowers should be associated with ill-luck. In the western counties, for instance, one should never take less than a handful of primroses or violets into a farmer's house, as neglect of this rule is said to affect the success of the ducklings and chickens.

But when it appeared that she was one of the spring-flowers of the human family, so soon withdrawing thither whence they come, he found that she began to pull at his heart, not merely with the attraction betwixt childhood and age, in which there is more than the poets have yet sung, but with the dearness which the growing shadow of death gives to all upon whom it gathers.

Louis and Hector would speculate on the probable chances of the shanty escaping from the fire, and of the fence remaining untouched. Catharine lamented for the lovely spring-flowers that would be destroyed by the fire. "We shall have neither huckleberries nor strawberries this summer," she said mournfully; "and the pretty roses and bushes will be scorched, and the ground black and dreary."