All in a garden fair; the simple story of three boys ... - University Library

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ALL IX A CARDEX FAIR.
and crowns herself with flowers, iind trips with
light foot and careless ease over meadows
ankle-deep with buttercups. During these her
happy moods we all fall to being happy too
every poet thinks of rhymes to fit a sonnet
every musician reaches down his fiddle ; and
everywhere there is such a twanging of lyres,
singing of madrigals, dancing of ballads, war-
bling of ditties, and universal chorus of praise,
that it is enough to turn the head of any god-
dess, to say nothing of a mere minor deity
and simple country nymph. And all in a
moment—lo I—she changes ; she frowns ; she
is cold ; she sings no longer ; she puts on sad-
coloured robes ; she is as forbidding as poor
!Miss February with her sealskins, her red nose
her frozen toes, and the cold in her head.
Alas ! poor May. Then the lyre, the theorbo,
the viol, the bagpipe, the scrannel straw, the
lute, the dulcimer, tabor, and pipe are all, with
one consent, silenced and put upon the shelves;
the musicians sit down, sad ; the poets tear up
their unfinished lays ; the sonirs cease ; every-