tXbe Sleep of tbe plants 195 



quiver through the bud, and that wide margin — 

 gleaming Avhite as any new fallen snow — is fully un- 

 furled ! Look along that wall of green. It is all 

 astir ; discs of snow burst forth here and there by 

 scores ; how marvelous, how human is this waken- 

 ing of a flower ! Who wonders that Shakespeare — 

 that flower and nature lover — sung about " winking 

 May buds that ope their golden eyes !" 



Strange sleep of the plants, how full it is of mys- 

 teries ! Sleep is called among mortals " the twin of 

 death," but seems to be much more death's twin in 

 the long waiting of many seeds ; life lingers in them 

 passive for so many seasons ! Sometimes when 

 locked in what is truly death, plants become again 

 vivid in other manifestations. 



There was a lily bull) once placed in the hand of a 

 Pharaoh as he Avent his long journey to Rhada- 

 manthus. After centuries of burial it was given to 

 one of these latest summers and became a flower. 

 There was a root of lotus held by a roj-al red man in 

 his grave ; his skeleton fingers yielded it to the in- 

 quisition of his white successor, and it brought forth 

 stem, leaf, and bloom. There was a handful of 

 wheat Avrapped up in the mummy cloths of an agricul- 

 tural priest, long ago. Egypt delivered it to England, 

 and it thrived into a harvest. Surely such return of 

 life in the least, hints of resurrection for the greater. 



