n6 A WHITE-PAPER GARDEN 



How many generations of song and move- 

 ment and usefulness, and beauty and pure 

 delight are lost when one of them falls ! 



And as for recognising them by the attempts 

 to reduce their songs to musical notes, or to 

 syllables ! The one perfected effort I now 

 recall is Emerson's starling phrase, 



" The starling flutes his O-ka-lee," 



as sweetly in the printed page as in the March 

 marshes. And yet even this must be heard 

 by that inner ear which remembers. 



I do not like red a red flower is like a 

 coarse voice or an ungentle hand : it hurts ; 

 and in my garden I will have none of them. 

 There is, however, a single exception, and 

 that is a part of the pomp of September 

 the favoured Septembers in which one's good 

 fortune shows us this special bit of splendid 

 colouring. There is a scrap of verse some- 

 where about the cardinal flower, which shows 

 it not ineffectively verses which, I think, run 

 somehow thus : 



" Oh ! Bumble-bee, revelling in the sweets 

 September has stowed away 

 In the heart of the wayside clover bloom, 

 Don't you know 'tis the Sabbath Day ? 



