l6 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



every individual leaf below bowed with folded palms. The white 

 clovers were similarly well brought up, and continued their ves- 

 pers through the livelong night, their little praying bands to be 

 seen everywhere along the path. The yellow hop clover played 

 all sorts of antics with its leaves without seeming rhyme or 

 reason. The tall bush clover, rising here and there among the 

 slumberous beds, presented a complete surprise, being entirely 

 changed from its diurnal aspect, the ordinary generous leafy 

 spread of foliage now assuming the shape of an upright wand, 

 each three -foliate leaf being raised upon its stem, with the leaf- 

 lets folded inward, clasping the maternal stalk. It had its arms 

 full indeed, and seemed conscious of its heavy responsibility. The 

 trailing ground-nut vine and the delicate wild bean were hardly 

 recognizable in their odd night-dress; and the desmodiums at 

 the border of the woods presented a singular contrast of drooping 

 listlessness, with each leaflet hanging as vertically as a plummet. 

 I sought the familiar plumy beds of the little partridge -pea, won- 

 dering what sort of a reception I would meet from that quarter, 

 but I found these plants even more fast asleep and transformed 

 than their drowsy neighbors, and had trodden on a number of the 

 plants ere I discerned them, for, like the sensitive mimosa, which 

 they so much resemble, and which 



"opened its fan-like leaves to the light, 

 And closed them beneath the kisses of night," 



these tiny leaflets were now folded in a long flat ribbon for each 

 leaf, presenting thin edges to the sky, and hardly distinguishable 

 from the thin seed-pods among them. Nor were these all. Folded 

 leaves and strange sleeping forms were nodding about me on 

 every hand as I walked this dreamy realm acres of " billowy 

 drowse " nursed in the cradle of a zephyr. What sort of a " wide- 

 awake " poet was that, I mused, who lamented from his troubled 

 pillow : 



"A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by 

 One after one ; the sound of rain, and bees 

 Murmuring ; the fall of rivers, winds, and seas ; 



