10 SOME AUTUMN DAYS IN IOWA 
nature poems are the next best thing to nature her¬ 
self. 
But nature is better. No description of nature 
can be equal to nature herself. One day in the 
October fields and woods to him who hath eyes 
to see is worth more than all the sonnets and prose 
poems on October he has ever read. And after 
such a day the sonnets and the prose poems will 
mean more than they have ever done before. The 
sunrise “boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud cup’s 
brim” as it did for Pippa, the mill girl, long ago 
in Asolo. The glorious blue of the cloudless sky, 
the warm sun which “pours out on the fair earth 
his quiet smile — the sweetest of the year,” the 
wondrous blending of colors, the tang of the au¬ 
tumn breeze and the chance to find the last and 
best flower of all the year — the fringed gentian 
— combine to make a day in October a resistless 
attraction “to him who in the love of nature holds 
communion with her visible forms” and tries to 
understand “her various language.” 
South of the four northern tiers of counties 
the fringed gentian is comparatively a rare vis¬ 
itor. But here and there it may be found well 
down beyond the central line and if you have the 
instinct and the patience and the determination 
you shall find it — the flower of which many of 
