CHRYSANTHEMUMS 



garden-patches of our villages, beside the roads filled with dead 

 leaves; compare with them these enormous masses and fleeces 

 of snow, these disks and globes of red copper, these spheres of 

 old silver, these trophies of alabaster and amethyst, this de- 

 lirious prodigy of petals which seems to be trying to exhaust 

 to its last riddle the world of autumnal shapes and shades 

 which Winter entrusts to the bosom of the sleeping woods ; let 

 the unwonted and unexpected varieties pass before your eyes; 

 admire and appraise them. 



Here, for instance, is the marvellous family of the stars: 

 flat stars, bursting stars, diaphanous stars, solid and fleshy stars, 

 milky ways and constellations of the earth that correspond 

 with those of the firmament. Here are the proud egret- 

 plumes that await the diamonds of the dew; here, to put our 

 dreams to shame, the fascinating poem of unreal tresses : mad 

 and miraculous tresses; honeyed moonbeams, golden bushes, 

 and flaming whirlpools; curls of fair and smiling maidens, of 

 fleeing nymphs, of passionate bacchantes, of swooning sirens, 

 of cold virgins, of frolicsome children, which angels, mothers, 

 fauns, lovers have caressed with their calm or quivering hands. 

 And then here, pell-mell, are the monsters that cannot be 

 classed: hedgehogs, spiders, frizzles, curly endives, pine- 



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