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I have once been visited by large flights of cross-bills; and whenever the snow lies long and deep on the ground, a flock of cedar-birds comes in mid-winter to eat the berries on my hawthorns. I have never been quite able to fathom the local, or rather geographical partialities of birds.
Thick-clustered berries arrayed the hawthorns, the briar was rich in scarlet fruit; everywhere the frost had left the adornment of its subtle artistry. Each leaf upon the hedge shone silver-outlined; spiders' webs, woven from stein to stem, glistened in the morning radiance; the grasses by the way side stood stark in gleaming mail.
For often I have wished to see a person again without realising that it was simply because that person recalled to me a hedge of hawthorns in blossom; and I have been led to believe, and to make some one else believe in an aftermath of affection, by what was no more than an inclination to travel.
In the center of Tir-na-n'Og towered a great hill; but instead of its being capped with peak or rocks it was gently hollowed at the top, as though in the beginning, when it was thrown up molten from the depths of somewhere, a giant thumb had pressed it down and smoothed it round and even. All about the brim of it grew hawthorns and rowans and hazel-trees.
This verdant valley was sheltered by some of the oldest hawthorns George Fairfax had ever seen very Methuselahs of trees, whose grim old trunks and crooked branches time had twisted into the queerest shapes, and whose massive boles and strange excrescences of limb were covered with the moss of past generations.
Orlando little thought that Ganymede was the fair Princess Rosalind who, by her noble condescension and favor, had so won his heart that he passed his whole time in carving her name upon the trees and writing sonnets in praise of her beauty; but being much pleased with the graceful air of this pretty shepherd-youth, he entered into conversation with him, and be thought he saw a likeness in Ganymede to his beloved Rosalind, but that he had none of the dignified deportment of that noble lady; for Ganymede assumed the forward manners often seen in youths when they are between boys and men, -and with much archness and humor talked to Orlando of a certain lover, "who," said she, "haunts our forest, and spoils our young trees with carving Rosalind upon their barks; and he hangs odes upon hawthorns, and elegies on brambles, all praising this same Rosalind.
I shall never forget the yellow gorse and the hawthorns, and such beautiful velvety grass." Her enthusiasm pleased her aunt; moreover, it was a great relief to find the unknown niece well-bred and companionable, and not overburdened with shyness. Already Mrs.
Let it be our business to give it an opportunity of showing itself to affectionate eyes. May 10, 1878. I have just come back from a solitary walk. I heard nightingales, saw white lilac and orchard trees in bloom. My heart is full of impressions showered upon it by the chaffinches, the golden orioles, the grasshoppers, the hawthorns, and the primroses.
And then I returned to my hawthorns, and stood before them as one stands before those masterpieces of painting which, one imagines, one will be better able to 'take in' when one has looked away, for a moment, at something else; but in vain did I shape my fingers into a frame, so as to have nothing but the hawthorns before my eyes; the sentiment which they aroused in me remained obscure and vague, struggling and failing to free itself, to float across and become one with the flowers.
Down it came slowly as it were with outstretched arms, both to fall, carrying the coloured light of the sky to the very surface of the earth. Roses bloomed on every bush, and some of the great hawthorns up which the briars had climbed seemed all flowers.
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