64 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
as Coleridge expresses it, was Chaucer’s verse 
in a large degree. His wasa paradis parfumé, 
of a kind quite different from the hot-house 
paradise of our modern poetry, whose odors are 
of Phuile de coco, du musc et du goudron so liked 
by Baudelaire and his admirers. 
Emerson’s poems are good to have in one’s 
tricycle-pouch. I wish I could say as much for 
those of Matthew Arnold. Nothing can be 
finer than the tonic raw sweetness of some of 
Emerson’s verses when read in the solitude of 
the woods; and no doubt this unstrained 
American honey is too rich (as is the pulp of 
our papaws) for the over-delicate English pal- 
ate. Iam afraid that Mr. Arnold would find 
fault even with the flavor of sassafras tea or 
rhubarb pies! It is one of Emerson’s quali- 
ties, sharply observable, that, whatever may be 
his technical short-coming, his thoughts are so 
phrased in his poems as to give them a smack 
of the clean, the home-brewed, the genuine. 
A cup of sweet-apple cider, with its honest bou- 
quet and non-intoxicating effect, is not a whit 
more grateful than some of his wood-notes. 
He had the nerve to preserve the aroma of a 
thought, even at the expense of a false rhyme 
or a halting verse. He left some seeds and 
floating bits of apple-rind in his cider. As we 
slowly imbibe his precious meanings we are 
ready to quote him :— 
“T, drinking this, 
Shall hear far Chaos talk with me;” 
and we fall into a state of mind that melts 
*“ Solid nature to a dream.” 
Let some flying tourist stop for a moment 
