ordinary conviction of the matter. For the great treatment of obvious
things there must evidently be an extraordinary conviction.

But whether the chief Lady of the lyrics be this, or whether she be the
implacable Elizabethan feigned by the love-songs, she has equally passed
from before the eyes of poets.




JULY


One has the leisure of July for perceiving all the differences of the
green of leaves. It is no longer a difference in degrees of maturity,
for all the trees have darkened to their final tone, and stand in their
differences of character and not of mere date. Almost all the green is
grave, not sad and not dull. It has a darkened and a daily colour, in
majestic but not obvious harmony with dark grey skies, and might look, to
inconstant eyes, as prosaic after spring as eleven o'clock looks after
the dawn.

Gravity is the word--not solemnity as towards evening, nor menace as at
night. The daylight trees of July are signs of common beauty, common
freshness, and a mystery familiar and abiding as night and day. In
childhood we all have a more exalted sense of dawn and summer sunrise
than we ever fully retain or quite recover; and also a far higher
sensibility for April and April evenings--a heartache for them, which in
riper years is gradually and irretrievably consoled.