These Summer Visitations 77 



she evades us, and leaves us while giving her 

 promise. Were man to manage the progress, 

 we well know how he would do it; everything 

 all at once would be perfect, and run on time, 

 like a railroad. So should we lose this enticing 

 delay, and the grace of surprise would be want 

 ing that grace which, turning the coign of a 

 ledge, reveals the gay columbine dancing in the 

 light airs : 



&quot; With a gypsy beauty free and fine.&quot; 



For now the columbine is happy in the sunny 

 woodland, and its slender roots in the mere dry 

 clefts of the rocks sustain a burden of beauty so 

 rich that one marvels to see such results from a 

 footing that seems so precarious. Just a few 

 root-threads in a rift barely enough to contain 

 them, and here is this wonderful flower, nodding, 

 yellow and red, on its slight, sturdy stem, with its 

 beautiful sunlighted leaves, so perfectly wrought 

 to sustain it. Also the anemones are out in their 

 benign modesty, the rue and the wood anemones, 

 and the pretty star flower their kin. The hepat- 

 ica s season has passed, it also was once called 

 anemone, and indeed one easily recognizes its 

 kindred in the singular changeable beauty of the 

 rue anemone s satiny petals, besprinkled with sil 

 ver, surrounding its yellow anthered stamens 



