108 April — The Celandine in Decay. 



not to remember them when he sees the Lesser Celandine 



in her decay. 



• But lately, one rough day this Flower I passed, 

 And recognized it, though an altered form, 

 Now standing forth an offering to the blast 

 And buffeted at will by rain and storm. 

 I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice, 

 " It doth not love the shower ; nor seek the cold, 

 This neither is its courage nor its choice, 

 But its necessity in being old. 

 The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew ; 

 It cannot help itself in its decay." ' 



Surely in all the range of poetry there is no finer and 

 ti .ier description of the real nature of decay — that there 

 is no courage in it, nor choice, but only necessity and 

 helplessness — yet in the association with old age in man, 

 which occupies the concluding stanza of this poem, one 

 cheering consideration is omitted, that the note of melan- 

 choly might be wholly unrelieved. It is certain that by 

 courage and strength of will men really can resist, for 

 long years, some of the worst evils of old age, and at 

 least one happy consequence of the modern feeling de 

 senectnte (so different from Cicero's) is that men not only 

 try to keep themselves young, but actually succeed for a 

 very long time in doing so. In the vegetable world there 

 is neither courage, nor choice, nor effort, but only sub- 

 mission. The plant is rooted in its place, and can seek 

 no shelter against the weather, nor any protection against 

 its enemies, neither can it strengthen by voluntarily di- 

 rected nervous force the resisting power of stalk or 

 branch. We are so much accustomed to that old artifice 



