AN OCTOBER DAY 
ii 
the poets have sung, and none more sweetly than 
Bryant: 
"Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, 
And colored with the heaven’s own blue, 
That openest, when the quiet light 
Succeeds the keen and frosty night, 
‘Thou waitest late and comest alone, 
When woods are bare and birds are flown. 
And frosts and shortening days portend 
The aged year is near its end. 
“Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 
Look through its fringes to the sky. 
Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall.*’ 
In Iowa the fringed gentian comes before the 
“woods are bare and birds are flown.” It may 
be different in New England. 
But if you would find the fringed gentian you 
must be a lowly pilgrim. With an automobile 
or even a horse your quest would be as fruitless 
as was the quest of Sir Launfal when with golden 
spurs and richest mail he rode forth to seek the 
holy grail. You must go afoot and walk per¬ 
chance half a day through long slough grass, with 
your clothing covered with Spanish needles, beg¬ 
gar lice, tick trefoil, sand burs and cockleburs un¬ 
til you look almost as forlorn as the leper who 
begged an alms from Sir Launfal, and then, per- 
