ALONG THE SALT MARSHES 153 



that the marsh will ever get is that which the 

 gray mists of early morning seem to have 

 brought in and left like a fragrant memory of 

 themselves, the lavender gray of the marsh-rose- 

 mary. "There's rosemary; that's for remem- 

 brance," said Ophelia, and many a lover of sea 

 and marsh-side will carry longest in memory the 

 gentle sadness that the tint of the sea-lavender 

 gives the marsh when all its other colors are still 

 those of the flush joy of summer. Remember- 

 ing Ophelia, marsh-rosemary seems its best 

 name, though you have a right to sea-lavender if 

 you wish. If the sea fogs did not bring it as an 

 essence of the first glimpse of dawn in gray ocean 

 spaces, then I am convinced that the loving tides 

 bear it as a gift to the island and scatter it shyly 

 at its feet, after dark. 



You have but to wander about the shores of 

 the island at the marsh line to find strange evi- 

 dence of this gift-bearing propensity of the shy 

 tides. Trinkets of all sorts that they gather in 

 travels in distant seas the tides bring and lay lov- 

 ingly at the roots of black oak and sweet gum, 

 hickory and stag-horn sumac. LI ere is bamboo 

 that for all I know grew near the head waters of 

 the Orinoco, though it may have sprouted in the 



