SPRING WEATHER, FLOWERS AND POETS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1686, 22 June 1904, Page 7

SPRING WEATHER, FLOWERS AND POETS

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

' LONDON, April 29.

Thanks to an overcast sky and a sudden fall in the temperature you arei spared a flowery description of the beauties of the English spring this year. We had been revelling in the unwonted luxury of brilliant sunshine, and the country was looking its very best under conditions at once novel and delightful in this age of rain and flood. Yesterday, and far many days before, it was all sunshine and flowers ; but alas ! to-day we huddle over fires and bemoan our luckless fate. Out of doors, poor shivering wretches discuss the horrid rumour that the summer of 1304 is already at an end. Under these conditions the charm of springtime works rather badly. O'ne feels with KoKo that “the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la,” may be a delusion and a mockery. What right have they to be blooming when the thermometer drops below thirty ? What if the parks are ablaze with hyaeinthe and tulips and “a crowd, a host of golden daffodils”; what if the* cuckoo’s twin notes have already been heard at Shoreham, Sevenoaks, or anywhere else; what if the nightingale nas been singing in Kent? These things

are as nothing to the shivering townsman when the mists of winter still linger in the streets, and • a leaden sky shuts out the sunshine. He turns instead to read with grim delight the news that the spring poet shooting season opened successfully in Fleet street and neighbourhood yesterday. The day’s sport is described by a writer in the “Bystander,” who notes that poets were weak on the wing, few reaching any height at all, while it was noticed that the large majority suffered from deformed feet. Sport was evidently good, for it is recorded by this voracious scribe that the total bag for the day ivas 240 brace spring poets, and two journalists, “of beautifully yellow plumage, shot by Mr Cadbury,” who is the managing director of the * Daily News.” “There is.” adds the 'Bystander,” “no more delightful sport than that of spring poet-shooting. The breed is easily recognised by the length of its hair and the peculiar sound it emits when on the wing. One distinguishes a soft murmur of ‘love-dove-above’—and then the poet darts before one’s eyes, only the next moment to disappear or fall beneath one’s gun.” It is a touching picture.