98 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. -— 
the aromas and perfumes of wild things; nor 
am I sure that explanation would be profitable, 
if possible. To taste the perfectly distilled 
honey that lurks in the red-clover bloom is a 
sufficient demonstration of this influence. A 
subtle thrill, elusive as it is fascinating, follows 
the touch of the tongue to this infinitesimal 
philter. It was made for the bumblebee ; but 
your pastoral man may profit by the insect’s 
example. If Rossetti, while bending over a 
woodspurge, had been less an artist and more 
a poet and philosopher, he might have dis- 
covered more than he expresses in :— 
“One thing then learnt remains to me,— 
The woodspurge has a cup of three.” 
Compare the flowers of Tennyson and Keats 
with those of Baudelaire— 
“Des fleurs se pament dans un coin”— 
and the whole fearful difference between the 
sweets of nature and the filth and rottenness 
where those sweets are wanting, will rush upon 
your consciousness. ‘There is something more 
than the mere shimmer of rhetoric in Virgil’s 
“Tum silvis scena coruscis 
Desuper, horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra.” 
There is in the words a suggestion of what 
woodsy freshness and fragrance, of what spices 
and resins, that grove may hold. Howells 
brings to mind the’same possibilities when, 
in his poem called “ Vagary,” he sings— 
“Deep in my heart the vision is, 
Of meadow grass and meadow trees 
Blown silver in the summer breeze.” 
There is a smack of browsing in such a verse 
Sa 
