THE CLIMBING HEMP-WEED. 121 



vases into the most diverse and fantastic shapes, of eggs, and 

 hearts, and circles, of lances, and wedges, and arrows, and shields. 

 She cleaves and parts and notches them in the most cunning ways, 

 combines their blades into the most subtle and complicated vari- 

 eties, and scallops their edges and points into patterns that involve, 

 seemingly, every possible angle and every line of grace." 



The grace of this airy vine and the delicious summer rest and 

 the peaceful calm of the blue air which it calls to mind, brings 

 with it the memory of Lowell's lines : 



This willow is as old to me as life; 



And under it full often have I stretched, 



Feeling the warm earth like a thing alive, 



And gathering virtue in at every pore, 



Till it possessed me wholly and thought ceased, 



Or was transfused in something to which thought 



Is coarse and dull of sense. Myself was lost, 



Gone from me like an ache, and what remained 



Became a part of the universal joy. 



My soul went forth, and, mingling with the tree, 



Danced in the leaves; or floating in the cloud, 



Saw its white double in the stream below; 



Or else sublimed to purer ecstasy, 



Dilated in the broad blue over all. 



I was the wind that dappled the lush grass, 



The thin-winged swallow skating on the air; 



The life that gladdened everything was mine. 



Was I thus truly all that I beheld? 



Or is this stream of being but a glass 



Where the mind sees its visionary self, 



As, when the kingfisher flits o'er his bay, 



Across the river's hollow heaven below 



His picture flits; another, yet the same? 



