Emerson's rhodora, and Lowell's dandelion; while 

 in Chaucer the whole Spring buds and sings, and all 

 along the lines of Tennyson flowers "brush you with 



fine touches. 



William C. Gannett. 



The flowers are Nature's poems, 

 In blue and red and gold; 



With every change from bud to bloom. 

 Sweet fantasies unfold. 



The trees are Nature's music — 



Her living harps are they. 

 On which the fingers of the wind 



Majestic marches play. 



Selected. 



Flowers will bloom over and over again in poems, 

 as in the summer fields, to the end of time, always 

 old and always new. Why should we be more shy 

 of repeating ourselves than the Spring be tired of blos- 

 soms or the night of stars ? ^^.^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^_ 



Who ever sees a hawthorn or a sweetbrier (the 

 eglantine) that his thoughts do not, like a bolt of 

 light, burst through ranks of poets, and ranges of 

 sparkling conceits which have been born since Eng- 

 land had a written language, and of which the rose, 

 the willow, the eglantine, the hawthorn, and other 

 scores of vines or trees, have been the cause as they 

 are now and forevermore the suggestions and remem- 

 brances ? Who ever looks upon an oak and does not 

 think of navies, of storms, of battles on the ocean, 

 of the noble lyrics of the sea, of English glades, of 

 the fugitive Charles, the tree-mounted monarch, of 

 the Heme oak, of parks, and forests of Robin Hood 

 and his merry men, of old baronial halls with mellow 

 light streaming through diamond-shaped panes upon 

 oaken floors, and of carved oaken w;ainscotings ? 



Selected. 



