126 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



them. Thus the plant clings to other woodier 

 stems and climbs vicariously. But why bed- 

 straw ?" I trust that none of the people who came 

 out of the ark and set about naming things as 

 they followed had to make bedding of these 

 rough stems. With the whorls of slim green 

 leaves that climb with the slender stalks the 

 plants make lace and a green mist all about, un- 

 derfoot in the marsh, lace that drapes tall plants 

 to which it clings, a green mist out of which shine 

 constellations of tiny star blooms. Picking these 

 constellations to pieces one might place a hun- 

 dred of the tiny, four-pointed stars on a copper 

 cent and never overlap the petals, yet they shine 

 above the green as Orion and Cassiopsea do over 

 the frost fog of a winter night, they are so vividly 

 white. 



I never see this at first. It is only after the 

 tranquillity of the place has shrunk my unwieldy 

 bulk to the patient potency of the tiny herbs 

 themselves that I have the sight. It is admir- 

 able, this potent patience of these wee things that 

 are born in bogs yet in their own world grow 

 stars the memory of which lasts as long in the 

 consciousness of man as does that of the Pleiades. 

 If you pluck them you will see by turning them 



