THE HIGH TIDE OF JOY 79 



leaving behind it a warmth of devotion to its beauty and 

 a tender sorrow that more of it was not ours. It is pleas- 

 ant to imagine it has a place in the pretty theory of the 

 transmigration of souls, wherein man's imperfect aspira- 

 tions unfold by slow degrees from the nature of the 

 insensate clod, gaining in spiritual loveliness through a 

 cycle of many lives. 



Why not, after wasting brute passion in the tiger, 

 exhausting foolish loquacity in the parrot, soaring 

 toward unattainable heights with the eagle, trying many 

 paths to knowledge in the devious ways open to myriad- 

 minded man why not go a step farther and rest for a 

 time to "climb to a soul in grass and flowers"? 



You, perchance, in your pride, the tulip of the spring; 

 your neighbor, the rose of a hundred leaves, and she with 

 a desire for sunlight and color, an Oriental poppy, to 

 dazzle the world with a spectacle of the garden afire, to 

 shed beauty on the wind, and to take flight to other 

 worlds when June has reached her perfect days. 



Like the majority of good people we overlook in the 

 crowds, day after day, whose virtues are not known until 

 they do something to separate themselves from their 

 fellows, there are many reliable garden flowers escaping 

 the recognition of the passer-by until they reach the 

 great events of their existence and astonish his eyes with 

 blossoms, and he beholds an old friend before him. 



Not so with the poppy tribes, which have an individ- 



