SOCIAL CAUSES OF UNREST 141 



of his business and at the same time, with Lampman, 

 thrill with the joy of the earth: 



The broad earth bids me forth. I rise 

 With lifted brow and upward eyes, 

 I bathe my spirit In blue skies, 



And taste the springs of life. 

 I feel the tumult of new birth; 

 I waken with the wakening earth; 

 I match the bluebird In her mirth; 



And wild with wind and sun, 

 A treasurer of immortal days, 

 I roam the glorious world with praise. 

 The hillsides and the wooded ways, 



Till earth and I are one.* 



Few know the birds, the common flowers, or even 

 the forest trees, and as for the native shrubs they are 

 quite nameless. This lack is general. An English 

 observer writes: "There is no help in visions of 

 Arcadia ; yet it is plain fact that in days gone by the 

 peasantry found life more than endurable. They had 

 their folk-songs, now utterly forgotten. They had 

 romances and fairy-lore, which their descendants could 

 no more appreciate than an idyll of Theocritus. If 

 your peasant love the fields* which give him bread, he 

 will not think it hard to labor in them . . . There 

 was a time when the old English nanics of all our 

 flowers were rornmon on rustic lips — by which, indeed, 

 they wcp" first uttered. Tin- fact that flowers and 

 birds arc well-nigh forgotten, togellier with the songs 

 ami the elves, shows how a<lvaneed is the process of 

 rural disintegration. "f 



• Archibald Lampman, " Lyrics of Earth." 



t " Th^' I'rlvaff Fapors of Honry Ryccroft." p. 202. 



