IReturn to TRature 



the lilies, as if hand in hand, going idly 

 and happily up the slopes and over the 

 peaks to the valleys beyond. 



Furthermore, the wood-thrush lays upon 

 his liquid flute-strain a strange weight of 

 interpretation not to be misunderstood in 

 this garden of sincerity. He tells me why 

 the lilies wander across the hills; it is to 

 search out the secret of unfading beauty. 

 Just over beyond the summit, in some 

 favored dell, there is a spot, the paradise of 

 lilies, whither the rovers all are bound. 

 And now that I think of it, I have been 

 there myself, eastward of Yonah, beside a 

 brook, and have spent a week and two days 

 with my fly- rod and the anthology, some 

 notes of which dallying-time are in the little 

 soiled pocket-book on the desk before me. 

 I wonder if I am the only person in the 

 world who finds a haunting, wavering, 

 elusive something in certain strokes of 

 Greek poetry comparable to no other im- 

 pression save that made by bird-phrases 

 in a lonely wood ? Keats nearly coincided 

 with me in feeling when he wrote : 



The voice I hear this passing night was heard 

 In ancient days by emperor and clown. 

 178 



