Part 32

Richard Jefferies.

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ST. JAMES'S DAY. (New Style. July 25th.)

'Till Saint James's Day be past and gone, There may be hops, or there may be none.

Hereford.

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July, to whom, the dog-star in her train, St. James gives oisters, and St. Swithin rain.

Churchill.

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Oh! golden, golden summer, What is it thou hast done? Thou hast chased each vernal roamer With thy fiercely burning sun.

Glad was the cuckoo's hail. Where may we hear it now? Thou hast driven the nightingale From the waving hawthorn bough.

Thou hast shrunk the mighty river; Thou hast made the small brook flee; And the light gales faintly quiver Through the dark and shadowy tree.

W. Howitt.

AUGUST

Ancient Cornish name: Miz-east, harvest month.

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Jewel for the month: Sardonyx. Insures happiness in marriage.

AUGUST FIRST. (Loaf-mass Day.)

Day of offering first fruits, when a loaf was given to the priests in place of the first fruits.

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At Latter Lammas, i.e. never.

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The August gold of earth.

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All things rejoiced beneath the sun, the weeds, The river, and the cornfields, and the reeds; The willow-leaves that glanced in the light breeze, And the firm foliage of the larger trees.

Shelley.

OF GARDENS.

In August come plums of all sorts in fruit, pears, apricots, berberies, filberds, musk melons, monkshoods of all colour.