XXIX. THE WILD SPRING FLOWERS OF THE 
FARM 
‘Take of my violets! I found them where 
The liquid south stole o'er them, on a bank 
That leaned to running water. There's to me 
A daintiness about these early flowers, 
That touches me like poetry. They blow 
With such a simple loveliness among 
The common herbs of pasture, and breathe out 
Their lives so unobtrusively, like hearts 
Whose beatings are too genile for the world.” 
—Nathaniel Parker Willis (April). 
Warm sunshine, and the breath of a scft wind from the 
south, and rills murmuring in every glen, and—surely there 
must be wild flowers blooming in the woods. Let us go out 
and find them. Some, like the hepaticas, will be peeping 
from under the woodland carpet of sodden brown leaves— 
peeping with eyes of a soft captivating baby-blue. Some, 
like the anemones, will be lifting their leafy sprays of pearly 
white blossoms on grassy banks, in tufts of exquisite grace. 
Some, like the marsh-marigolds, will be spreading their 
shining leaves and bright golden flowers by the waterside 
in cheerful array. Each in its own way is brightening some 
unspoiled spot of earth; and every year, in spring, all are 
ready to greet and to cheer us again, like old friends. After 
the barren winter, how welcome they are! 
How different they are in their behavior! The fugitive 
flower of bloodroot shoots upward encased in a single huge 
leaf, which then spreads out its broadly scalloped border, 
making a fine background for a fine blossom. The adder’s- 
tongue shoots out on its long slender stalk from between two 
spotted leaves. The trillium flower unfolds from between 
a whorl of three green leaves, held at the top of an erect 
stem. These flowers come singly. But the flowers of the 
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