Chapter LXXXIII

"With the dawning of the New Year, fresh hope quickens in the poet's breast. He would fain hasten its laggard footsteps, longing for the flowers of spring and for the glory of summer. Can trouble live in the spring--the season of life and love and music? Let the spring come, and he will sing 'for Arthur a sweeter, richer requiem.'"--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

1. NORTHERN SHORE. Robertson explains: "The north being the last to be included in the widening circle of lengthening daylight as it readies further and further down from the equator."

2. NEW-YEAR. The natural, not the calendar year. The re-awakening of life in nature.

5. CLOUDED NOONS. From the noons, which are still clouded.

6. PROPER. Own.

9. SPIRE. Flowering spikes.

10. SPEEDWELL. "The Germander Speedwell is a slender, wiry plant, whose stem sometimes creeps along the surface of the ground before it grows upwards. The flowers have four small petals of the brightest blue, and within the flower at the foot of the petals is a small white circle, with a little white eye looking up. Two stamens with crimson heads rise from this white circle, and in the very centre of the flower there is a tiny green seed-vessel, with a spike coming out of the top."--_C. B. Smith_.

12. LABURNUMS.

"And all the gold from each laburnum chain
Drops to the grass." --_To Mary Boyle_.