The Lay of the Band 
blaze in the shad-bush, to burn higher and hotter 
across the summer, to flicker and die away, a line of 
yellow embers in the weird witch-hazel of the autumn. 
At the sign of the shad-bush the doors of my 
springtime swing wide open. My birds are back, 
my turtles are out, my squirrels and woodchucks 
show themselves, my garden is ready to plough and 
plant. There is not a stretch of woodland or meadow 
now that shows a trace of winter. Over the pasture 
the bluets are beginning to drift, as if the haze, on 
the distant hills, floating down in the night, had 
been caught in the dew-wet grass. They wash the 
field to its borders in their delicate azure hue, 
Along with the bluets (“innocence” we should 
always call them), under the open sky, there unroll 
in the wet shaded bottoms of the maple swamps the 
pointed arum leaves of the Jacks, or Indian turnips. 
How they fight for room! There are patches where 
all the pews are pulpits, with some of the preachers 
standing three deep. 
Now why should there be such a scramble for 
place among the Jacks, while just above them in the 
dry woods the large showy lady’s-slipper opens in 
isolated splendor? Here is one, yonder another, with 
IIo 
