156 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 
till at length, my sins confessed, my matins said, my soul re- 
freshed, as I leave the temple inspired for the work of a new day, 
I am led as though by an unseen hand to a bright spot where 
the sunbeams penetrate the gloom through a window in the 
pines, and I stand transfixed! “What,” do you ask, “a vision?” 
Yes. Look! yonder in the chancel, those snowy lilies hovering 
among the ferns! A vision? Yes. What matters it that my 
seraph assumed the material form which man has called “ Cypri- 
pedium?” In the archetypal botany of the Infinite we know not 
what may be its correspondence. 
“Not a natural flower can grow on earth 
Without a flower upon the spiritual side, 
Substantial, archetypal, all aglow 
With blossoming causes —not so far away 
That we, whose spirit sense is somewhat cleared, 
May not catch something of the bloom and breath.” 
How many of my congenial spirits everywhere that chance to 
read my page will have known with me the exaltation of mo- 
ments such as this! How readily will they pardon me if I 
“paint the lily” in the hope of reawakening an experience 
which, perchance, may have become obscured through the years, 
but for which life has been the sweeter, the happier, and the 
better! Such is the harvest of the wild garden—divine fruits 
not reckoned in the conservatory nor yet in the botany. 
As in the artificial garden we pass from parterre to parterre, 
or to conservatory or shaded fernery, each with its appropriate 
denizens, so in the wilds we find the worthier model, every condi- 
tion of sod, of light, of shade finding its true expression. The 
“forest ledge” has its own family, which the botanists well know. 
The pine wood has its faithful broods; the yielding loam, with 
“soft brown silence carpeted,” is figured with bloom and garland 
easily numbered in anticipation. The beech woods have a rival 
company. The hemlocks hold the darling of the mould, the 
trailing arbutus, always with a numerous attendant complement. 
The meadow-blooms that fall in the swath of the new-mown hay 
