TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS. 61 



A Western poet, Ben Parker, has embodied 

 in a simple stanza a good idea of that freshness 

 which lingers in the memory after one has been 

 driven by the pressure of worldly cares out of 

 the redolent ways of nature : 



" O morning when the days are long, 



And youth and innocence are wed, 

 And every grove is full of song, 



And every pathway void of dread ; 

 Who rightly sings its rightful praise, 



Or rightly dreams it o'er again, 

 When cold and narrow are the days, 



And shrunken all the hopes of men 

 He shall re-waken with his song 

 The morning when the days were long." 



The old English poet, Sir Richard Fanshawe, 

 took a gloomier view : 



" Let us use it while we may 

 Snatch those joys that haste away I 

 Earth her winter coat may cast 

 And renew her beauty past : 

 But, our winter come in vain, 

 We solicit spring again ; 

 And when our furrows snow shall cover 

 Love may return, but never lover." 



There was a philosopher for you ; but here 

 comes one of our young American poets with 

 a fancy that finds pretty and apt comparisons 

 wherever it skips. Sings Edgar Fawcett : 



" If trees are Nature's thoughts or dreams, 



And witness how her great heart yearns, 

 Then she has only shown, it seems, 

 Her lightest fantasies in ferns." 



It is quite surprising, when one comes to 

 look, how chary our later poets are of using 

 the dew for dampening their materials ; they 

 seem to prefer lamp-oil. It may be, after all, 



