OCTOBER 237 



" Till ranks of seeds their witness bear, 

 And softly through the altered air 

 Hurries a timid leaf. 



" O sacrament of summer days, 

 O lost communion of the haze, 

 Permit a child to join. 



" Thy sacred emblems to partake 

 Thy consecrated bread to break, 

 Taste thy immortal wine ! " 



I have not been quite able to guess out Miss 

 Dickinson's favourite flower, and so to win 

 one more point in a little game of solitaire, at 

 which I sometimes play on rainy nights, when 

 I like to think of the flowers my forerunners 

 have found to be worthy of their best love. 

 I am almost sure, however, that it must have 

 been the Indian pipe that illusive yet most 

 alluring mystery of the deep woods, which 

 beckons you with a promise of spiritual unfold- 

 ings which our minds are, alas ! too gross to 

 perceive ! 



Of English writers, the daisy is for Chaucer. 

 We have no other view of the poet of the 

 dawn so intimate as that in which we see him 

 in eager flight across the dewy grass of that 

 long-ago morning when the virgin daisies 

 were opening their golden hearts to the sun. 



