The Lay of Be Band 
And how erect and unblushing! The pointed 
Spireas, the sumacs, the thistles, this crowd along 
the river, this red wood-lily, even the tall swaying 
spray of meadow-rue! Slender, dainty, airy, the 
meadow-rue falls just short of grace and delicacy. 
It feels the season’s pride of life. It is angled, rigid, 
rank. Were there the slightest bend to its branches, 
the merest suggestion of soul to the plant, then, 
from root to spreading panicles, there had been more 
grace, more misty, penciled delicacy wrought into 
the tall meadow-rue than into any flower-form of 
my summer. 
But the suggestion of soul in the meadow-rue, as 
in the whole face of nature, is lost in flesh. It is the 
body, not the spirit, that is now present. She is well 
fed, well clothed, opulent, mature. She is conven- 
tional, — as conventional as a single, stiff spire of the 
steeple-bush, — turned to such a pointed nicety as to 
seem done by machine. 
And yet the steeple-bush rarely grows as single 
spires, but by the meadow-full. We rarely see a single 
spire. We never gather summer flowers one by one, 
as we gather the arbutus and hepatica of spring. 
Life has lost its individuality. It is all massed, 
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