MINSTREL WEATHER 



sunflowers have come to the edge of the 

 stream, but not to look into the waters; 

 their sunward-gazing petals are delicately 

 scented, surpassing their sisters of the 

 fenced garden. The half-tamed tiger lily, 

 haunter of deserted dooryards and faithful 

 even to abandoned mountain farms long 

 since given over to the wildcat and the 

 owl, wanderer by dusty roadsides, offers 

 each morning new buds, and by twilight 

 they have bloomed and withered. Like 

 the May rose, this is an elegiac flower, 

 clinging to lost gardens when all the rest 

 have vanished, though patches of tansy, 

 herb of witchlore, will show pungent 

 golden buttons for long years untended, 

 let the forgotten gardener but plant it 

 once. How many a little cabin, built in 

 eagerness and hope, is remembered at last 

 only by the tiger lily, May rose, and chim- 

 ney swift! Yellow sweet clover, catching 

 a roothold anywhere, declaring the gravel 

 bed a garden, makes it happiness to breathe 

 the entranced air. The yellow butterflies, 

 like leaves of autumn, tremble and flurry- 

 where the sun-steeped field meets the 

 sweet dark wood. Among the rocks gleam 

 ebony seeds of the blackberry lily, whose 



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