The Response of Plants 155 



ney, out of the dim and misty past. Some of them spoke 

 to him with their sighing leaves and soothed the early 

 questioning of his perturbed spirit. Some of them 

 spread above his head their leafy boughs in loving shel- 

 ter; some of them when he fain would worship threw 

 their Gothic arches high aloft, when ''groves were God's 

 first temples ; ' ' some of them lent him all luscious forms 

 of fruit ; some of them came with him all the way in re- 

 sponse to his demand for very bread, from bending twig, 

 and bearded head, and bursting pod : and when at last 

 all other wants supplied the spirit of beauty, wakened 

 in man's soul, began to cry, plants heard the call; from 

 leafy bower and woodland aisle, with graceful form and 

 petal's blush they came, to furnish forth at bidding 

 of man's choice, a beauty and a loveliness that shall one 

 day deck the earth redeemed. 



