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 : 



&quot; 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.&quot; 



The old English poet, Sir Richard Fanshawe, 

 took a gloomier view : 



&quot; Let us use it while we may 

 Snatch those joys that haste away ! 

 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.&quot; 



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 : 



&quot; 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.&quot; 



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, 



