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Updated: May 31, 2025
The sultry air, charged with a scent of meadow-sweet, of river and roses, closed on his senses, drowsing them. "The fixed idea," which has outrun more constables than any other form of human disorder, has never more speed and stamina than when it takes the avid guise of love.
But as to this flowery array of thine, in a few hours it shall be all faded and nought. Nay, even now, as I look on thee, the meadow-sweet that hangeth from thy girdle-stead has waxen dull, and welted; and the blossoming eyebright that is for a hem to the little white coat of thee is already forgetting how to be bright and blue. What sayest thou then?"
Down the sweet country lane they went, with the willows hanging over them, and the daisies and buttercups and meadow-sweet running riot all over the banks. Hilda stood up in the cart and pulled off twigs from the willows as she passed under them, and made garlands, which the farmer obediently put over the oxen's necks.
To smooth her face growing rigid with fresh fears at his silence, he met her mouth. That kiss in which she spoke what her soul had to say, calmed her, and she smiled happily from it, and in her manner reminded him of his first vision of her on the summer morning in the field of the meadow-sweet.
In the ditches hereabout, and beside the brook itself, the meadow-sweet scents the air; the country-folk call it 'meadow-soot. And in those ditches are numerous coarse stems and leaves which, if crushed in the fingers, yield a strong parsnip-like smell.
She certainly felt better for the food, and more fit to face the long drive home; and never to her life's end did she forget that drive on that sunny June morning the dazzling white dusty road stretching before them, the hedges powdered with dust, the scent of the dog-roses and meadow-sweet blossoming so bravely and sending up their fragrance, in spite of their dusty covering, to cheer the passers-by.
There is a scent of elder flowers, the meadow-sweet is pushing up, and will soon be out, and an odour of new-mown hay floats on the breeze. From the oak green caterpillars slide down threads of their own making to the bushes below, but they are running terrible risk. For a pair of white-throats or "nettle-creepers" are on the watch, and seize the green creeping things crossways in their beaks.
Who would not warm to the brightness and delicacy of those delicious rippling tones, that seemed to leap from the strings alive like sparks of fire the dainty, tripping ease of the arpeggi, that float from the bow with the grace of rainbow bubbles blown forth upon the air, the brilliant runs, that glide and glitter up and down like chattering brooks sparkling among violets and meadow-sweet, the lovely softer notes, that here and there sigh between the varied harmonies with the dreamy passion of lovers who part, only to meet again in a rush of eager joy!
One member of the company was still awaited; the shepherd-boy for the nymphs to woo, the knight for whom the ladies waited at the window, the prince that was to kiss the sleeping summer back to life and love. But when meadow-sweet, debonair and odorous in amber jerkin, moved graciously to his place in the group, then the play was ready to begin. And what a play it had been!
By chance their talk turned to wayside flowers, and he let the Mercury creep through a high-banked lane, all ablaze with wild roses and honeysuckle, while he pointed out the blue field scabious, the pink and cream meadow-sweet, the samphire, the milk-wort and the columbine, the campions in the cornland, and the yellow vetchling that ran up the hillside towards one of the wooded "islands" peculiar to the center of Somerset.
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