THE FRINGED GENTIAN 



GENTIANA CRINITA, Frcel. 



To him who in the love of Nature holds 

 Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 

 A various language; for his gayer hours 

 She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 

 And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 

 Into his darker musings with a mild 

 And healing sympathy, that steals away 

 Their sharpness ere he is aware. 



[Bryant. 



In the great Book of Nature, God has uttered his wondrous 

 and majestic thoughts. The poet and the naturalist, each in his 

 own way, translates them to us out of the " original tongues." The 

 poet, with the vision of a seer and the sympathy of a worshipper, 

 enters the silent heart of Nature, and feeling the pulses of thought 

 and emotion beating there, interprets them to the hearts of other 

 men. He is no true poet who does not find in the facts and physical 

 forms of Nature, in sea or sky, in bird, or tree, or flower, some spirit 

 which is akin to that which glows and throbs in human hearts. 

 "Out of the dust of the earth" the same Hand made us all. "Nature 



