And lo! there are the mowers at work! there are the hay-makers! Green swaths of mown grass--haycocks, and wagons ready to bear them away--it is summer, indeed! What a fragrance comes floating on the gale from the clover in the standing grass, from the new-mown hay; and from those sycamore trees, with all their pendant flowers. It is delicious; and yet one cannot help regretting that the year has advanced so far. There, the wild rose is putting out; the elder is already in flower; they are all beautiful, but saddening signs of the swift-winged time. Let us sit down by this little stream, and enjoy the pleasantness that it presents; without a thought of the future. Ah! this sweet place is just in its pride. The flags have sprung thickly in the bed of the brook, and their yellow flowers are beginning to shew themselves. The green locks of the water-ranunculuses are lifted by the stream, and their flowers form snowy islands on the surface; the water-lilies spread out their leaves upon it, like the palettes of fairy painters; and that opposite bank, what a prodigal scene of vigorous and abundant vegetation it is. There are the blue geraniums, as lovely as ever; the meadow-sweet is hastening to put out its foam-like flowers, that species of golden-flowered mustard occupies the connecting space between the land and water; and hare-bells, the jagged pink lychnis, and flowering grass of various kinds, make the whole bank beautiful. Every plant that is wont to shew itself at this season, is in its place, to give its quota of the accustomed character to the spot; every insect, to beautify it with its hues, and enliven it with its peculiar sound:-- There is the grashopper, my summer friend,-- The minute sound of many a sunny hour Passed on a thymy hill, when I could send My soul in search thereof by bank and bower, Till lured far from it by a foxglove flower, Nodding too dangerously above the crag, Not to excite the passion and the power To climb the steep, and down the blossom drag:-- Them the marsh-crocus joined, and yellow water-flag. Shrill sings the drowsy wassailer in his dome, Yon grassy wilderness, where curls the fern, And creeps the ivy; with the wish to roam He spreads his sails, and bright is his sojourn, ’Mid chalices with dews in every urn; All flying things a like delight have found-- Where’er I gaze, to what new region turn, Ten thousand insects in the air abound, Flitting on glancing wings that yield a summer’s sound. _Wiffen’s Aonian Hours._