Viper’s Buglos. _Echium vulgare._
Dedicated to _St. Aloysius._
[Illustration: ~Summer.~]
Now cometh welcome Summer with great strength,
Joyously smiling in high lustihood,
Conferring on us days of longest length,
For rest or labour, in town, field, or wood;
Offering, to our gathering, richest stores
Of varied herbage, corn, cool fruits, and flowers,
As forth they rise from Nature’s open pores,
To fill our homesteads, and to deck our bowers;
Inviting us to renovate our health
By recreation; or, by ready hand,
And calculating thought, t’ improve our wealth:
And so, invigorating all the land,
And all the tenantry of earth or flood,
Cometh the plenteous Summer--full of good.
*
“How beautiful is summer,” says the elegant author of _Sylvan Sketches_,
a volume that may be regarded as a sequel to the _Flora Domestica_, from
the hand of the same lady.--“How beautiful is summer! the trees are
heavy with fruit and foliage; the sun is bright and cheering in the
morning; the shade of broad and leafy boughs is refreshing at noon; and
the calm breezes of the evening whisper gently through the leaves,
which reflect the liquid light of the moon when she is seen--
---------“lifting her silver rim
Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim
Coming into the blue with all her light.”
On page 337 of the present work, there is the spring dress of our
ancestors in the fourteenth century, from an illumination in a
manuscript copied by Strutt. From the same illumination, their summer
dress in that age is here represented.
[Illustration]