34 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
for the blossoming, and care not who gathers 
them, child or woman or man or God. They 
have bloomed—that is at once their task and 
poetry. What happens and who happens as the 
gatherer they give no heed to. They have 
bloomed. But to uproot them is murder. 
In New Hampshire mine host, a man of grace 
and one not lost to wonder, took me out along 
the pine woods’ paths, along the stream when 
catkins hung in profusion on the white poplars; 
and we found where the trailing arbutus was 
at bud. Spring was barely come, if come at all, 
but the arbutus was a-wearying for the day- 
light and the spring light and would not wait— 
could not wait—and was holding up its clustered 
buds with a wistfulness that ached its way into 
a man’s heart. What in any wise can be more 
touched with the infinite than flowers reaching 
toward blossoming? Who taught them spring 
was come? Why should they not lie still and 
low as they have months, long months past? 
And they do not. That is their mystery and 
their eternal poetry. And so I saw the buds 
of the arbutus scentless as the rocks among 
which they were attempting bloom; and I, poor 
traveler, must move on. I could not wait. Du- 
ties called and the tarrying of the May flower 
meant its birthday should not have me for one 
of the jubilant company, witnessers of its birth. 
Then I came to Maine where only the swamp 
maples hold a hint of spring. They burned like 
