XXIX. THE WILD SPRING FLOWERS OF THE 



FARM 



' ' Take of my violets! I found them where 

 The liquid south stole o'er them, on a bank 

 That leaned to running water. There's to me 

 A daintiness about these early flowers. 

 That touches me like poetry. They blow 

 With such a simple loveliness among 

 The common herbs of pasture, and breathe out 

 Their lives so unobtrusively, like hearts 

 Whose beatings are too gentle for the world." 



— Nathaniel Parker Willis (April). 



Warm sunshine, and the breath of a soft wind from the 

 south, and rills murmuring in every glen, and — surely there 

 must be wild flowers blooming in the woods. Let us go out 

 and find them. Some, like the hepaticas, will be peeping 

 from under the woodland carpet of sodden brown lea\'es— 

 peeping with eyes of a soft capti\-ating bab}'-blue. Some, 

 like the anemones, will be lifting their leafy sprays of pearly 

 white blossoms on grassy banks, in tufts of exquisite grace. 

 Some, like the marsh-marigolds, will be spreading their 

 shining leaves and bright golden flowers by the waterside 

 in cheerful array. Each in its ovm w^ay is brightening some 

 imspoiled spot of earth; and every year, in sjjring, all are 

 ready to greet and to cheer us again, like old friends. After 

 the barren winter, how welcome they are ! 



How diilerent they are in their behavior! The fugitive 

 flower of bloodroot shoots upward encased in a single huge 

 leaf, which then spreads out its broadly sealloix^d border, 

 making a fine backgroimd for a fine blossom. The adder 's- 

 tongue shoots out on its long slender stalk from between two 

 spotted leaves. The trillium flower unfolds from between 

 a whorl of three green leaves, held at the top of an erect 

 stem. These flowers come singly. But the flowers of the 



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