"Swallow, swallow, flying, flying south,"
and bearing on swift wing the message that--
"Dark and true and tender is the north"?
Or who, that has once read it, can forget _Les Hirondelles_ of Beranger,
and how the French captive among the Moors questions the swallows about
his country, his home, his friends, which they perhaps have seen?
Lastly, what a felicitous line is this of the American poet Lowell, when
he describes
"The thin-winged swallow _skating_ on the air."
I must bring these Notes, such as they are, to a close, and yet I feel I
have scarcely even yet described the pleasures of a garden. But my
memory at least can do it justice. It recalls summer afternoons, when
the lawn tennis went merrily on on the lawn, by the weeping ash-tree,
and summer evenings, when the house was too hot, and we sat out after
dinner upon the terrace with the claret and the fruit. The air was all
perfume, and the light lingered long in the east over the church steeple
three miles away, and no sound but of our own voices broke the silence
and the peace.
Again, there were fine bright autumn days--days when the garden was full
of warm scent and warmer colour--days when the children could swing for
hours in the hammock, which hangs between two large Sycamores, and have
their tea-table beneath the trees,--days when the still air was only
stirred by the patter of a falling chestnut, or the note of some
solitary bird, or the sound of church bells far away. Beyond the
grass-field, which comes nearly up to the house, was a field of wheat,
and we could watch the harvesting, and follow with our eyes the loaded
waggons as they passed along by the hedge-row trees.
But such recollections grow thicker as I write, and words, such as I at
least can command, do them little justice. I cannot really share with my
readers these pleasures of the past, though I like to fancy that they
may feel some kindly sympathy, as they remember happy days in gardens
dear to them as mine to me.