THE ORCHARD. 



263 



There are the Baldwins and Flyers, 

 Wrapped in their beautiful fires ! 

 Color forks up from their stems 



As if painted by Flora, 

 Or as out from the pole stream the flames 



Of the northern Aurora. 



" Here shall our quest have a close: 

 Fill up your basket with those ; 

 Bite through their vesture of flame. 



And then you will gather 

 All that is meant by the name, 

 ' Seek-no-farther.' " 



But perhaps Thoreau's essay upon "Wild Apples" 

 is the best known, as it is also the raciest in its style 

 and appreciation. How he enjoyed them ! Let him 

 tell his own story of his gleaning, in a passage justly 

 famous as perhaps the classic in the literature of the 

 apple : 



"I know a Blue-Pearmain tree, growing within the edge of 

 a swamp, almost as good as wild. You would not suppose 

 there was any fruit left there, on the first survey, but you must 

 look according to system. Those which lie exposed are quite 

 brown and rotten now, or perchance a few still show one bloom- 

 ing cheek here and there amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless, 

 with experienced eyes, I explore amid the bare alders and the 

 huckleberrj'-bushes and the withered sedge, and in the crevices 

 of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under the fallen 

 and decaying ferns, which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly 

 strew the ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen 

 into hollows long since and covered up by the leaves of the 

 tree itself, — a proper kind of packing. From these lurking 

 places, anywhere within the circumference of the tree, I draw 

 forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, maybe nibbled by rabbits 

 and hollowed out by crickets, and perhaps with a leaf or two 



