OUR POET FRIENDS. 259 
Our good old friend Montgomery called the snowdrop 
“The morning star of flowers.” 
Will we not be prone to think more charitably of the sunflower after 
this? 
“The sunflower, thinking ’twas for him foul shame 
To nap by daylight, strove to excuse the blame; 
It was not sleep that made him nod, he said, 
But too great weight and largeness of his head.” 
This paper is to be a medley, you will see, 
Flitting from flower to fruit and fruit to tree, 
and so let us go back to an old Polish poet, prophetic soul, who thus 
pictured the life and death of our prairie trees: 
“Who midst the prairie wild sublimely stand, 
And grapple with the storm god hand to hand, 
Then drop like pyramids away, 
Stupendous monuments of calm decay!” 
Come with me now far back into the realms of antiquity and see how a 
garden looked to old Homer, three thousand years ago, and see how like 
were gardens then to those in the same latitudes today: 
“Fenced with green enclosure all around, 
Tall, thriving trees confess the fruitful mold; 
The reddening apple ripens here to gold; 
Here the blue fig with luscious juice o’erflows; 
The branch here bends beneath the weighty’ pear 
And verdant olives flourish round the year. 
Eternal mildness breathes on fruits untaught to fail; 
The same mild season gives the blooms to blow, 
The buds to harden and the fruits to grow. 
Beds of various herbs forever green 
In beauteous order terminate the scene.” 
It surely must be interesting to you to know that irrigation is at least 
as old as Homer, and the manner of its application unchanged, for in 
Homer’s garden— 
“Two plenteous fountains the whole prospect crowned. 
These through the garden lead their streams around, 
Visit each plant and water all the ground.” 
The older we grow the more we know, the more convinced we are that 
there is nothing really new under the sun. 
Shakespeare was up on pruning, for he wrote: 
“Superfluous branches 
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live.” 
And to that great poet the 
“Fruit field grew and ripened, 
Till it stood in all the splendor 
Of its garments green and yellow.” 
Shakespeare knew of the windbreak, too, and see what a perfect de- 
scription he makes of one in very few words: 
“The line-grove that weather-fends your home.” 
