Each heart awaits, and hails you as its own; Hies to the field, the general toil to share. BLOOMFIELD. HAYMAKING. Summer glows warm on the meadows, the speedwell, and goldcups, and daisies, Darken 'mid deepening masses of sorrel, and shadowy grasses Show the ripe hue to the farmer, and summon the scythe and the haymakers Down from the village; and now, even now, the air smells of the mowing, And the sharp song of the scythe whistles daily, from dawn till the gloaming Wears its cool star; sweet and welcome to all flaming faces a-field Besprinkled with labour, and with the pure brew of the malt right now; cheery ! GEORGE MEREDITH. Our ancestors took advantage of every natural holiday to keep it long and gladly. Rural plays, or as Shakspeare calls them, Whitsun pastorals, succeeded after a little interval, the games of May; and now, in June, a feast exclusively rural and popular took place at the time of sheep-shearing. See the "Winter's Tale; "Drayton's Pastorals," eclogue 9; and his "Polyolbion," song 14, where he tells how The shepherd king, Whose flock hath chanced that year the earliest lamb to bring, With flowers, curds, clouted cream, and country dainties stored; Quaffs syllabubs in cans to all upon the plain, And to their country girls, whose nosegays they do wear; The white fleeces of the sheep on these occasions, the brown hue of the shearers, the blue of the sky, the running silver of the waters, the green of the grass, the various colours of the flowers, and the straw-hatted damsels that wear them, make up a delightful picture to the imagination. Haymaking is more toilsome, and is performed in modern times by less happy labourers, who chiefly come over from Ireland for that purpose. But they have at least fine weather and secure pay. The ladies may practise haymaking on a small scale upon lawns and paddocks; and if they are not afraid of giving their fair skins a still finer tinge of the sunny, nothing makes them look better. Allan Ramsay makes his lover become enamoured of the 'Lass of Patie's Mill,' while helping to make hay : A tedding of the hay Nothing is more lovely than a female head uncovered out of doors. It looks nymph-like and a part of the fertile landscape. Theocritus has used it with exquisite grace and nature in a passage imitated by Virgil. A goatherd and shepherd are boasting of their popularity with the village lasses:Comatas. There's Clearista, when my goats go by, Lacon. Pelts apples, and then hums me something sly. As to a seat against a haycock, on the side farthest from the sun, with the odour of the new-mown grass perfuming all the air, and a sense of slumberous beauty breathing from the warm sky above, and the green earth below- -it is a luxury which has still survived for the lover of the fields; and we accordingly nestle to it in our fancy, and with halfshut eyes rest from our own pleasant work.-LEIGH HUNT. Spite of the glowing and cloudless midsummer sky beneath which we have reposed with Leigh Hunt in the hay-field, let us suppose the hay carried, and hear in the words of another poet AN INVOCATION TO RAIN IN SUMMER. O gentle, gentle, summer rain, To feel that dewy touch of thine, MARSH FLOWERS IN JUNE. In heat the landscape quivering lies; Come, thou, and brim the meadow-streams, W. C. BENNETT. 269 The rains have fallen, the brooks are full, and now we have MARSH FLOWERS IN JUNE. Spiked reed, and golden iris bending over Murmur, slow streams, and sway within the wind, BESSIE PARKES. Broad level fields, and hedges thick with trees, With humming insects and with bleating sheep; A sky both grey and tender,-misty clouds Floating therein, streak'd here and there with gold; Ivy clothes all the ruins, sprouting weeds, |