EXPLORATIONS 



Perhaps within the fragrance of a 

 blossom that sprang from the same stock 

 old Cromwell and his Ironsides paused 

 some May morning and breathed deep 

 and sang a surly hymn. We propagate 

 the lilac from the root, not the seed, and 

 the same sap has flowed through the veins 

 of the present strain for a thousand years. 

 A whiff of lilac perfume in a woodland 

 tangle next month, and out of the wilder- 

 ness we step, from one ancient garden 

 to another, back by centuries into the 

 pleasant places of a world long gone. 



To many a New England child the smell 

 of lilacs brings homesickness, and he does 

 not know why. It is because it is the 

 May odor of the vanished home garden, 

 not only of Myles and Priscilla of Ply- 

 mouth, but of a thousand generations of 

 his own stock before them. 



The woodland of to-day's discoveries 



