viii PREFACE 



of mine, published a few months ago; nominally a 

 reprint from a small volume of the same name, but 

 entirely rewritten. I wonder whether, possibly, some 

 who have read This Wonderful Universe, may now turn 

 to The Garden of Earth with the feeling described by Mr. 

 Alfred Noyes in one of his poems : 



" We should come 



Seeking a little refuge from the light 

 Of the blinding terrible star-sown Infinite, 



Seeking some sheltering roof, some four-walled Home, 



From that too high, too wide 



Communion with the Universe and God, 

 How glad to creep back to some lane we trod, 



Hemmed in with a hawthorn hedge on either side." 



Yet the marvels and the mysteries to be found in 

 that hawthorn hedge are not less than the marvels and 

 the mysteries of the Star-sown Universe, as seen and 

 known in ever so limited a measure by us on Earth. 



AGNES GIBERNE. 



