The letters out to her mistress, and she, Mrs. E. Hubbard,
looking over the pile remarked that she saw the Selborne
Magazine had come and she would just glance over it to see if it
contained anything to interest both of us.
After a minute or two she exclaimed "Why, here is a poem by Charlie
Longman! How strange - I never suspected him of being a poet!"
She was speaking of C. J. Longman, the publisher, and it must be
explained that he was an intimate friend and connection of hers through
his marriage with her niece, the daughter of Sir John Evans the
antiquary, and sister of Sir Arthur Evans.
The poem was To the Orange-tip Butterfly.
Cardamines! Cardamines!
Thine hour is when the thrushes sing,
When gently stirs the vernal breeze,
When earth and sky proclaim the spring;
When all the fields melodious ring
With cuckoos' calls, when all the trees
Put on their green, then art thou king
Of butterflies, Cardamines.
What though thine hour be brief, for thee
The storms of winter never blow,
No autumn gales shall scorn the lea,
Thou scarce shalt feel the summer's glow;
But soaring high or flitting low,
Or racing with the awakening bees
For spring's first draughts of honey - so
Thy life is passed, Cardamines.
Cardamines! Cardamines!
E'en among mortal men I wot
Brief life while spring-time quickly flees
Might seem a not ungrateful lot:
For summer's rays are scorching hot
And autumn holds but summer's lees,
And swift in autumn is forgot
The winter comes, Cardamines.
