STALKING THE WILD GRAPE 



sweet-fern. . Thus do sweet lives pass 

 their fragrance on to those about them. 



Many of these familiar odors had 

 come to me during the night as I half 

 slept and half listened to the vocal duel 

 between the thrush and the whip-poor- 

 will, but as I sprang to my feet at sun- 

 rise from my dent in the pasture moss 

 I got a whiff of another which seemed 

 more subtly elusive, more faintly fine 

 than these, perhaps because, though I 

 seemed to recognize it, I could not 

 name it. 



Many things I could name as I have 

 named them here, but this escaped me. 

 It had in it some of that real fragrance, 

 a joy without alloy, which you get in 

 late July or August from the clethra, 

 the white alder which lines the brook 

 and the pond shore with its beautiful 

 clusters of odoriferous white spikes. 

 35 



