I recall my moments of delight, the recognition of each flower that unfolded, the surprise of budding branches clothed in a night with green.  The first snowy gleam upon the blackthorn did not escape me.  By its familiar bank, I watched for the earliest primrose, and in its copse I found the anemone.  Meadows shining with buttercups, hollows sunned with the marsh marigold held me long at gaze.  I saw the sallow glistening with its cones of silvery fur, and splendid with dust of gold.  These common things touch me with more of admiration and of wonder each time I behold them.  They are once more gone.  As I turn to summer, a misgiving mingles with my joy.

SUMMER

I.

To-day, as I was reading in the garden, a waft of summer perfume—­some hidden link of association in what I read—­I know not what it may have been—­took me back to school-boy holidays; I recovered with strange intensity that lightsome mood of long release from tasks, of going away to the seaside, which is one of childhood’s blessings.  I was in the train; no rushing express, such as bears you great distances; the sober train which goes to no place of importance, which lets you see the white steam of the engine float and fall upon a meadow ere you pass.  Thanks to a good and wise father, we youngsters saw nothing of seaside places where crowds assemble; I am speaking, too, of a time more than forty years ago, when it was still possible to find on the coasts of northern England, east or west, spots known only to those who loved the shore for its beauty and its solitude.  At every station the train stopped; little stations, decked with beds of flowers, smelling warm in the sunshine where country-folk got in with baskets, and talked in an unfamiliar dialect, an English which to us sounded almost like a foreign tongue.  Then the first glimpse of the sea; the excitement of noting whether tide was high or low—­stretches of sand and weedy pools, or halcyon wavelets frothing at their furthest reach, under the sea-banks starred with convolvulus.  Of a sudden, our station!

Ah, that taste of the brine on a child’s lips!  Nowadays, I can take holiday when I will, and go whithersoever it pleases me; but that salt kiss of the sea air I shall never know again.  My senses are dulled; I cannot get so near to Nature; I have a sorry dread of her clouds, her winds, and must walk with tedious circumspection where once I ran and leapt exultingly.  Were it possible, but for one half-hour, to plunge and bask in the sunny surf, to roll on the silvery sand-hills, to leap from rock to rock on shining sea-ferns, laughing if I slipped into the shallows among starfish and anemones!  I am much older in body than in mind; I can but look at what I once enjoyed.

II.