aromatic flame. | did not know when | bought this farm that it grew 
spices, but it does. This is my spice grove which | will not exchange 
for sandalwood. Who could have thought in the bare winter that this 
crab-tree was an alabaster box holding precious ointment? I never 
dreamed it. How could 1? But now, when spring has come like fair 
Mary, lover of the Christ, and has broken the alabaster box, lo! the air 
is faint with fragrance as if Christ were here and the sacred odors laved 
his sacred feet. And were he here, he would say in gentle voice, 
«Whence brought you this ointment, very precious? | have not known 
its like for fragrance.’’ Friend, come to my farm when my spice grove 
of one wild crab-tree is in bloom and you will grow glad as a happy child. 
And then | have a whip-poor-will in my woods in the moonlight. A 
nightingale is not an American singer. He certainly is not a Kansas 
singer. He is not on my farm; but I am not regretful. I have the 
meadow lark on my brown fields, and his note is sweet enough to make 
a heart long for springtime just to hear his lute voice once. Yonder 
where the woods stand black against the hill and moonlight makes all the 
sky radiant, and dim distances are enchanting, and heaven seems to have 
settled down about my farm for the night, and the owl hoots with a leer 
in his voice, and the screech owl makes his pitiful complaint, then all of 
a sudden my whip-poor-will sets a-singing. A flute is not clearer. He 
is not a player of wide range of theme or tune, but has one he seems to 
love, and as | take it, having listened to him often (how often? no 
matter, not often enough), a song his beloved is fond of, for when once 
he blows its sweet staccatos and all of them, not one note omitted, and 
stops, | think | have heard his lady for whom he made the music say, 
“ Sing it once more, beloved, | love that love song so;’’ and so like any 
lover, obedient to his beloved, he tunes the instrument and sings his love 
song once again. If his lady is as | am, he will sing it night by night, 
nor ever grow weary. The whip-poor-will’s voice fits the moonlight 
and the starlight and the dusk and the dense darkness. O, but the 
notes are ‘‘rainy sweet.’’ I will ask my friend Harry D. Cornwell to say 
his say about our common friend the whip-poor-will. Friend Cornwell, 
have your say: 
‘“When apple-branches, flushed with bloom, 
Load June's warm evenings with perfume, 
And balmier grows each perfect day, 
And fields are sweet with new-mown hay, 
Then, minstrel lone, I hear thy note, 
Up from the pasture-thickets float— 
Whip-poor-will ! 
220 
