r, and the peach trees and the almonds blossomed snowily as
she passed. The olives decked themselves with their soft grey leaves,
the corn sprang up, green and lush and strong. The lemon and orange
groves grew golden with luscious fruit, and all the land was carpeted
with flowers. For six months of the year she stayed, and gods and men
rejoiced at the bringing back of Proserpine. For six months she left
her green and pleasant land for the dark kingdom of him whom she
loved, and through those months the trees were bare, and the earth
chill and brown, and under the earth the flowers hid themselves in
fear and awaited the return of the fair daughter of Demeter.

And evermore has she come and gone, and seedtime and harvest have
never failed, and the cold, sleeping world has awaked and rejoiced,
and heralded with the song of birds, and the bursting of green buds
and the blooming of flowers, the resurrection from the dead--the
coming of spring.

"Time calls, and Change
Commands both men and gods, and speeds us on
We know not whither; but the old earth smiles
Spring after spring, and the seed bursts again
Out of its prison mould, and the dead lives
Renew themselves, and rise aloft and soar
And are transformed, clothing themselves with change,
Till the last change be done."

Lewis Morris.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] Jean Ingelow.

LATONA AND THE RUSTICS

Through the tropic nights their sonorous, bell-like booming can be
heard coming up from the marshes, and when they are unseen, the song
of the bull-frogs would suggest creatures full of solemn dignity. The
croak of their lesser brethren is less impressive, yet there is no
escape from it on those evenings when the dragon-flies' iridescent
wings are folded in sleep, and the birds in the branches are still,
when the lilies on the pond have closed their golden hearts, and even
the late-feeding trout have ceased to plop and to make eddies in the
quiet water. "Krroak! krroak! krroak!" they go--"krroak! krroak!
krroak!"

It is unceasing, unending. It goes on like the whirr of the wheels of
a great clock that can never run down--a melancholy complaint against
the hardships of destiny--a raucous protest against things as they
are.

This is the story of the frogs that have helped to point the gibes of
Aristophanes, the morals of AEsop, and which have always been, more or
less, regarded as the low comedians of the animal world.

Laton