Comfort Me with Apples 193 



favorite plant of Lord Bacon's day. Wordsworth 

 wrote in jingling rhyme: 



" Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed 

 Their snow-white blossoms on my head, 

 With brightest sunshine round me spread 



Of spring's unclouded weather, 

 In this sequester' d nook how sweet 

 To sit upon my orchard seat ; 

 And flowers and birds once more to greet, 

 My last year's friends together." 



The incomparable beauty of the Apple tree in 

 full bloom has ever been sung by the poets, but 

 even their words cannot fitly nor fully tell the delight 

 to the senses of the close view of those exquisite 

 pink and white domes, with their lovely opalescent 

 tints, their ethereal fragrance; their beauty infinitely 

 surpasses that of the vaunted Cherry plantations of 

 Japan. In the hand the flowers show a distinct 

 ruddiness, a promise of future red cheeks ; but a 

 long vista of trees in bloom displays no tint of pink, 

 the flowers seem purest white. Looking last May 

 across the orchard at Hillside, adown the valley of 

 the Hudson with its succession of blossoming 

 orchards, we could paraphrase the words of Long- 

 fellow's Golden Legend: 



"The valley stretching below 



Is white with blossoming Apple trees, as if touched with lightest 

 snow." 



In the darkest night flowering Apple trees shine 

 with clear radiance, and an orchard of eight hun- 

 dred acres, such as may be seen in Niagara County, 

 New York, shows a white expanse like a lake of 



