Part 34

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A garden must be looked into, and dressed as a body.

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To smell wild thyme will renew spirits and energy in long walks under an August sun.

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Friday's a day as'll have his trick, The fairest or foulest day o' the wick.

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Dry August and warm Doth harvest no harm.

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Put in the sickles and reap, For the morning of harvest is red, And the long, large ranks of the corn, Coloured and clothed as the morn, Stand thick in the fields and deep, For them that faint to be fed.

Swinburne.

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Summer is purple, and drowsed with repletion.

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Now yellow harvests wave on every field, Now bending boughs the hoary chestnut yield, Now loaded trees resign their annual store, And on the ground the mellow fruitage pour.

Beattie. (From "Virgil.")

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AUGUST 16TH. (St. Roche's Day.)

Formerly celebrated in England as a general Harvest Home.

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Good huswives in summer will save their own seeds Against the next year, as occasion needs; One seed for another to make an exchange, With fellowly neighbourhood seemeth not strange.

Tusser.

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On one side is a field of drooping oats, Through which the poppies show their scarlet coats.

Keats.

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AUGUST 24TH. (St. Bartholomew's Day.)

If St. Bartholomew's Day be misty, the morning beginning with a hoar frost, then cold weather will soon ensue, and a sharp winter attended with many biting frosts.