Dazzled by brass and scarlet - O, Bathsheba - this is a woman's folly indeed! - Thomas Hardy

They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical. How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men.

The season developed and matured. Another year's instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral creatures, took up their positions where only a year ago others had stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings.

Love is faith, and faith, like a gathered flower, will live on a long time after nutriment has ceased