aromatic flame. I did not know when I bought this farm that it grew 

 spices, but it does. This is my spice grove which I will not exchange 

 for sandalwood. Who could have thought in the bare winter that this 

 crab-tree was an alabaster box holding precious ointment? I never 

 dreamed it. How could I ? But now, when spring has come like fair 

 Mary, lover of the Christ, and has broken the alabaster box, lo! the air 

 is faint with fragrance as if Christ were here and the sacred odors laved 

 his sacred feet. And were he here, he would say in gentle voice, 

 " Whence brought you this ointment, very precious ? I have not known 

 its like for fragrance." Friend, come to my farm when my spice grove 

 of one wild crab-tree is in bloom and you will grow glad as a happy child. 

 And then I have a whip-poor-will in my woods in the moonlight. A 

 nightingale is not an American singer. He certainly is not a Kansas 

 singer. He is not on my farm; but I am not regretful. I have the 

 meadow lark on my brown fields, and his note is sweet enough to make 

 a heart long for springtime just to hear his lute voice once. Yonder 

 where the woods stand black against the hill and moonlight makes all the 

 sky radiant, and dim distances are enchanting, and heaven seems to have 

 settled down about my farm for the night, and the owl hoots with a leer 

 in his voice, and the screech owl makes his pitiful complaint, then all of 

 a sudden my whip-poor-will sets a-singing. A flute is not clearer. He 

 is not a player of wide range of theme or tune, but has one he seems to 

 love, and as I take it, having listened to him often (how often ? no 

 matter, not often enough), a song his beloved is fond of, for when once 

 he blows its sweet staccatos and all of them, not one note omitted, and 

 stops, I think I have heard his lady for whom he made the music say, 

 " Sing it once more, beloved, I love that love song so ;" and so like any 

 lover, obedient to his beloved, he tunes the instrument and sings his love 

 song once again. If his lady is as I am, he will sing it night by night, 

 nor ever grow weary. The whip-poor-will's voice fits the moonlight 

 and the starlight and the dusk and the dense darkness. O, but the 

 notes are " rainy sweet." I will ask my friend Harry D. Cornwell to say 

 his say about our common friend the whip-poor-will. Friend Cornwell, 



have your say : 



" When apple-branches, flushed with bloom. 

 Load June 's warm evenings with perfume, 

 And balmier grows each perfect day, 

 And fields are sweet with new-mown hay, 

 Then, minstrel lone, I hear thy note, 

 Up from the pasture-thickets float 

 Whip-poor-will! 

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