SEPTEMBER FRUITS. Il5 
grass (Cinna arundinacea, L.) of the woodland add to 
the luxuriance of vegetation which is one of the great 
charms of untrimmed and unpruned Nature. 
“‘T know the lands are lit 
With all the autumn blaze of Golden Rod . 
And everywhere. the Purple Asters nod 
And bend and wave and flit,” 
but September will hardly seem to be September if be- 
fore its last days I do not somewhere find the favorite 
among the late flowers, the fringed gentian (Gentiana 
crinita, Froel.). To see it growing in its native haunts 
in some open glade of the forest, or by the margin of 
some dusky spring or in the lowlands by the roadside, 
with numerous blossoms opening their sweet and quiet 
eyes to the sky is one of the compensations of autumn. 
Bryant’s little poem, “To the Fringed Gentian,” is 
probably the most familiar of all the American poems 
of that kind. It is one of a group including, among 
many others, “Toa Waterfowl,” ‘Autumn Woods,” 
“The Painted Cup,” ‘The Planting of the Apple-tree,” 
“ Robert of Lincoln,” which show his deep poetic in- 
sight into Nature. He too, like Wordsworth, could say: 
“To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,” 
