154 



" Through the Wheats 



And I will set him in my uncle's eye 



Among the wheat, that, when his heart is glad 



Of the full harvest, he may see the boy, 



And bless him for the sake of him that's gone! " 



And as human feelings, at base, remain much unmodi- 

 fied, whatever the effect of outward custom and obser- 

 vance, it may be presumed that 

 the same sentiment inspired 

 Naomi and Ruth as regards the 

 latter going to glean in the fields 

 of Boaz. 



And all this suggests a ques- 

 tion : Why is infancy in itself 

 more poetic than adolescence, and 

 adolescence than middle age, 

 and middle age than senility ? 

 Is there not something inde- 

 finably expressive to the 

 imagination, in possibility, in 

 growth, in the promise of 

 indefinite expansion ? It is 

 not only the purity and inno- 

 cency of childhood that -en- 

 chant; it is the spring-like 

 promise, with its uncon- 

 wild oat. sciousness, and also its 



pomp of passing- beauty. That it is passing is one of 

 the elements that appeals to the heart. In the grown 

 man, with every line fixed and settled, with habits 

 formed, and the countenance become the very index of 

 these habits, what room is there for the brooding fore- 

 cast blended of hope and fear, which in some circum- 

 stances makes the commonest heart thrill to poetry ? 

 Childhood is the springtime, adolescence is the early 



