e Pageant, of Corona's
'May Queen' dress, of the lines (or, to be accurate, the line and a
half) she had to speak. This led to her repeating some verses she
had learnt at the Greycoats' School. They began--

"I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers."

And Corona was crazy over them, because (as she put it) "they made
you feel you were smelling all England out of a bottle."
Brother Copas told her of the man who had written them; and of a
lovelier poem he had written _To Meadows_--

"Ye have been fresh and green,
Ye have been filled with flowers,
And ye the walks have been
Where maids have spent their hours.

"You have beheld how they
With wicker arks did come
To kiss and bear away
The richer cowslips home. . . .

"But now we see none here--"

He broke off.

"Ah, there he gets at the pang of it! Other poets have wasted pity
on the dead-and-gone maids, but his is for the fields they leave
desolate."

This puzzled Corona. But the poem had touched her somehow, and she
kept repeating snatches of it to herself as she rambled off in search
of more birds' nests. Left to himself, Brother Copas pulled out book
and pencil again, and began botching at the last lines of the
_Pervigilium Veneris_--

"Her favour it was filled the sail of the Trojan
for Latium bound;
Her favour that won her AEneas a bride on
Laurentian ground;
And anon from the cloister inveigled the
Vestal, the Virgin, to Mars,
As her wit by the wild Sabine rape recreated
her Rome for its wars
With the Ramnes, Quirites, together
ancestrally proud as they drew
From Romulus down to our Ceesar--last,
best of that bone and that thew.--
Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye
who have loved, love anew!"

Brother Copas paused to trim his pencil, which was blunt. His gaze
wandered across the water-meadows and overtook Corona, who was wading
deep in buttercups.

"Proserpine on the fields of Enna!" he muttered, and resumed--

"Love planteth a field; it conceives to the
passion, the pang, of his joy.
In a field was Dione in labour delivered of
Cupid the Boy:
And the field in its fostering lap from her
travail receiv'd him: he drew
Mother's milk from the delicate kisses of
flowers; and he prospered and grew.--
Now learn ye to love wh