"We were very young," the grandmother said, Smiling and shaking her head; "And when one is young, One listens with half an ear, and speaks with a hasty tongue; So with shouted Yeses, And promises sealed with kisses, Hand-in-hand we started again, A chubby chain, Stretching the whole wide width of the lane; Or in broken links of twos and threes, For greater ease Of rambling, And scrambling, By the stile and the road, That goes to the beautiful, beautiful wood; By the brink of the gloomy pond, To the top of the sunny hill beyond, By hedge and by ditch, by marsh and by mead, By little byways that lead To mysterious bowers; Or to spots where, for those who know, There grow, In certain out-o'-way nooks, rare ferns and uncommon flowers. There were flowers everywhere, Censing the summer air, Till the giddy bees went rolling home To their honeycomb, And when we smelt at our posies, The little fairies inside the flowers rubbed coloured dust on our noses, Or pricked us till we cried aloud for snuffing the dear dog-roses. But above all our noise, I kept thinking I heard my mother's voice. But it may have been only a fairy joke, For she was at home, and I sometimes thought it was really the flowers that spoke. From the Foxglove in its pride, To the Shepherd's Purse by the bare road-side; From the snap-jack heart of the Starwort frail, To meadows full of Milkmaids pale, And Cowslips loved by the nightingale. Rosette of the tasselled Hazel-switch, Sky-blue star of the ditch; Dandelions like mid-day suns; Bindweed that runs; Butter and Eggs with the gaping lips, Sweet Hawthorn that hardens to haws, and Roses that die into hips; Lords-with-their-Ladies cheek-by-jowl, In purple surcoat and pale-green cowl; Family groups of Primroses fair; Orchids rare; Velvet Bee-orchis that never can sting, Butterfly-orchis which never takes wing, Robert-the-Herb with strange sweet scent, And crimson leaf when summer is spent: Clustering neighbourly, All this gay company, Said to us seemingly-- 'Pluck, children, pluck! But leave some for good luck: Some for the Naïads, Some for the Dryads, And a bit for the Nixies, and the Pixies,'"