For a short period in the spring, woodland floors are carpeted with bluebells. If you are lucky enough to find yourself in a forest during this window, the effect is magical—with the flower patches so dense they seem to flood the trees, and a perfume so floral and verdant it smells like bottled spring.

To experience the bluebells is fortunate, for how quickly they come and go. Emily Brontë captures the wondrous transience of the flower in a spirited ode (1839), in which she imagines its contentment with its brief but spectacular life, ushering in the first days of summer.

To A Bluebell
by Emily Brontë

Sacred watcher, wave thy bells!
Fair hill-flowers and woodland child,
Dear to me in deep green dells,
Dearest on the mountains wild.

Bluebell, even as all divine
I have seen my darling shine;
Bluebell, even as fair and frail
I have seen my darling fail.
Lift thy head and speak to me,
Soothing thoughts are breathed by thee.

Thus they whisper, 'Summer's sun
Lights me till my life is done;
Would I rather choose to die
Under winter's stormy sky?

Glad I bloom, and calm I fade,
Dews of heaven are round me stayed;
Mourner, mourner, dry thy tears,
Sorrow comes with lengthened years.'