DAFFODIL DAYS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21467, 15 April 1933, Page 6 (Supplement)

DAFFODIL DAYS

APRILi IN CORNWALL 'AN ANTIPODEAN LANDSCAPE Four men with big baskets the size of large waste-paper baskets pass with the first harvesting of daffodils from the fields. Tho day is one such as tho gods send after a cold spell followed by soft, wet weather, golden with sunshine, warm as June in tho shelter of the hedges, and the sea a sheet of shimmering hues—jade, emerald, blue and misty purple. Far away the great liners loom doubly large in tho clear air with long smoke-trails blowing out behind them like a mermaid's hair. In the fields the bright overalls of the girl pickers make moving splashes of colour, and their shriller voices minglo with tho deeper tones of men working in other fields. Behind them tho Cornish tors stare down on a landscape not greatly changed since the days of tho Druids; uplands with the green shoots of bracken curling their crooks under the tangled, rotted bronze carpet of last year's growth. Only the daffodils in their great masses would bo a new colour in the scene familiar to Druid and ancient Briton. Even tho towers of the tin mines and tho low-built cottages would scarcely intrude »upon their vision amidst the wide sweep of moors and green slopes dipping to tho neverchanging expanse of sea. The tin is almost gone and the industry in sad decline. It is daffodils and broccoli now, these and the shining masses of fish that slide on to the Cornish quays. There are days that are like a dream-lounged day on some Grecian isle; the sound of the bleating sheep and the whisper of tho waves the only sounds; the sky a blue liquidity; the"sea a shining radiance; the workers in the fields pausing in their work to stare in statuesque pose at beauty they feel but cannot be articulate about.