94 PEPACTON 



out the Middle and New England States, the hepa- 



tica is the first spring flower. 1 It is some days 



ahead of all others. The yellow violet belongs 



only to the more northern sections, — to high, cold, 



beechen woods, where the poet rightly places it; 



but in these localities, if you go to the spring woods 



every day, you will gather the hepatica first. I 



have also found the claytonia and the colt's-foot 



first. In a poem called "The Twenty- Seventh of 



March" Bryant places both the hepatica and the 



arbutus before it : — 



" Within the woods 

 Tufts of ground-laurel, creeping underneath 

 The leaves of the last summer, send their sweets 

 Upon the chilly air, and by the oak, 

 The squirrel cups, a graceful company, 

 Hide in their bells, a soft aerial blue " — 



ground-laurel being a local name for trailing ar- 

 butus, called also mayflower, and squirrel-cups for 

 hepatica, or liver-leaf. But the yellow violet may 

 rightly dispute for the second place. 



In "The Song of the Sower" our poet covers up 

 part of the truth with the grain. The point and 

 moral of the song he puts in the statement, that the 

 wheat sown in the fall lies in the ground till spring 

 before it germinates; when, in fact, it sprouts and 

 grows and covers the ground with "emerald blades' 1 

 in the fall : — 



" Fling wide the generous grain ; we fling 

 O'er the dark mould the green of spring. 

 For thick the emerald blades shall grow, 

 When first the March winds melt the snow, 



1 Excepting of course, the skunk-cabbage. 



