Oh were I A booming bee, to waft me to thy lair, Threading the fern and ivy in whose depths

[J] Half grey, half shagged with ivy to its ridge; 70 There, bending o'er the stream, the listless swain Lingers behind his disappearing wain.

But it was ordained that this winding-ivy of a Plantagenet should kill the true tree itself.

One farmhouse I noted carefully, and I longed to tear away the ivy from the old and crumbling porch, to see if I could not discern some half-effaced inscription telling me the date of this relic of the days of "Merrie England.

An owl might be peeping out from the ivy with which it was clad.

There was no hint of the comely roughness of untidy ivy on a ruin.

One day, when he was about to begin the foliage upon his balcony, he brought in a spray of ivy for a model; then Moll told him she knew where much better was to be found, and would have him go with her to see it.

Some years ago there was much ivy about the general building; but the "rare old plant" engendered dampness and had to be pulled down.

The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers, and the blue-eyed speedwell, and the ground-ivy at my feetwhat grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home-scene?

There's but the walls o' the house left now; grass growing in the hall, and ivy over the gables; there's no one livin' has ever hard tell o' smoke out

THE MIRACLE Who beckons the green ivy up Its solitary tower of stone?

She clung desperately, blindly, swung out; then felt the roots of the ivy above her rip free, one after another, far up, almost to the cornice.

For lately I did wear Grace as a garment; and my cheeks, o'er them Ran the rich growth like ivy round the stem.

His departure was like the falling down of a venerable cathedral, leaving the broken and bleeding ivy among the dust and debris.

Boys, also, would dream in like manner of love and marriage at Hallowe'en, if only they would gather ten leaves of ivy without speaking, throw away one, and put the other nine under their pillow.

* * "Tall the linden-tree, and near it An old hawthorne also grew; And wood-ivy like a spirit Hovered dimly round the two, Shaping thence that bower of beauty which I sing of thus to you.

-16- Sunshine was gilding the grounds of Brinkley Court and the ear detected a marked twittering of birds in the ivy outside the window when I woke next morning to a new day.