pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even without apples or cider, — a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet. The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature, — of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter, such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself? What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? Not my or thy great-grandfather's, but our great-grandmother Nature's universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decayed fatness. For my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come out of those long shallow black-schooner looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountain-head of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite till noonday even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that and follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no worshipper of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old herb-doctor Æsculapius, and who is represented on monuments holding a serpent in one hand, and in the other a cup out of which the serpent sometimes drinks; but rather of Hebe, cupbearer to Jupiter, who was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had the power of restoring gods and men to the vigor of youth. She was probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it was spring. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [Born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 22, 1819; died at Cambridge, August 12, 1891] MY LOVE Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear; Her glorious fancies come from far, And yet her heart is ever near. Great feelings hath she of her own, And sweet they are as any tone Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. Yet in herself she dwelleth not, Although no home were half so fair; No simplest duty is forgot, Life hath no dim and lowly spot That doth not in her sunshine share. She doeth little kindnesses, Which most leave undone, or despise; She hath no scorn of common things, Blessing she is: God made her so, She is most fair, and thereunto She is a woman: one in whom I love her with a love as still And, on its full, deep breast serene, It flows around them and between, Sweet homes wherein to live and die. SHE CAME AND WENT As a twig trembles, which a bird As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps An angel stood and met my gaze, O, when the room grows slowly dim, TO THE DANDELION Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold, May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease; 'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; Are in the heart, and heed not space or time: His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee; The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, Who from the dark old tree Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from heaven, which he could bring |