perpetual desolations! I like better the old Spanish poet who
says, "What of Rome; its world-conquering power, and majesty
and glory--what has it come to?" The ivy on the wall, the
yellow wallflower, tell it. A "deadly parasite" quotha! Is
it not well that this plant, this evergreen tapestry of
innumerable leaves, should cover and partly hide and partly
reveal the "strange defeatures" the centuries have set on
man's greatest works? I would have no ruin nor no old and
noble building without it; for not only does it beautify
decay, but from long association it has come to be in the mind
a very part of such scenes and so interwoven with the human
tragedy, that, like the churchyard yew, it seems the most
human of green things.

Here in September great masses of the plant are already
showing a greenish cream-colour of the opening blossoms, which
will be at their perfection in October. Then, when the sun
shines, there will be no lingering red admiral, nor blue fly
or fly of any colour, nor yellow wasp, nor any honey-eating or
late honey-gathering insect that will not be here to feed on
the ivy's sweetness. And behind the blossoming curtain, alive
with the minute, multitudinous, swift-moving, glittering
forms, some nobler form will be hidden in a hole or fissure in
the wall. Here on many a night I have listened to the
sibilant screech of the white owl and the brown owl's clear,
long-drawn, quavering lamentation:

"Good Ivy, what byrdys hast thou?"
"Non but the Howlet, that How! How!"