ranks of her forests ; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear green streams wind along their well - known beds; and under the dark quietness of the undisturbed pines there spring up, year by year, such company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the blessings of the earth. It was spring-time, too ; and all were coming forth in clusters crowded for very love. There was room enough for all, but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes, only to be nearer each other. There was the Wood Anemone, star after star, closing every now and then into nebulae ; and there was the Oxalis, troop by troop, like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie, the dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy snow, and touched with Ivy on the edges — Ivy as light and lovely as the Vine ; and, ever and anon, a blue gush of Violets and Cowslip bells in sunny places ; and in the more open ground, the Vetch, and Comfrey, and Mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the alpine Polygala, and the Wild Strawberry, just a blossom or two, all showered amidst the golden goftness of deep, warm, ambercoloured moss."
