June. But chronic ecstasy, the extreme and not 

 uncommon type of the afore-mentioned ladies, is 

 a disease, a mental, a moral disease indeed, which 

 must be cured before we can understand and 

 really love the out-of-doors. ISTature hates cant. 



"We need to hear old Triton's wreathed horn 

 — the oftener the better. The world of things, 

 mere things, is still very much with us. We are 

 in no danger from overmuch poetry. The 

 trouble with the tickle-bird-screamer persons 

 is not that they find too much" poetry in nature, 

 but that they really find none at all. For they 

 do not look in the right place for it. Poetry is 

 not in birds and sunsets and moonlight,— not in 

 things,— but, like the kingdom of heaven and 

 other things divine, it is in us, in ourselves. It 

 is a mistake to go about, like Orlando and Mrs. 

 C, sticking poems, the poets' poems, over earth 

 and sea and sky, imagining that this is loving 

 nature, that this is knowing the out-of-doors. 



How shall we see mice in the grass or hear 

 toads in the puddles with our heads cloud- 

 wreathed and our spirits afloat in the ether be- 

 yond the stars ? "Who wants to see mice or hear 

 toads? Not Mrs. C, nor Mrs. K., nor many of 

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