POPPIES IN THE WHEAT

(Copyright 1892, by Roberts Brothers)

Along Ancona's hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air, with ebb and flow

Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro
To mark the shore.

The farmer does not know
That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,
Counting the bread and wine by autumn's gain,
But I, I smile to think that days remain
Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet
No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain;
I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,
Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat."

-H. H.

ADDITION OF 1922

XXXIII

NATURE-LOVERS-ESSAYISTS-HISTORIANS

FIRST we glance into the lives of three nature-lovers, withdrawing them from the many who would conjure us.

John Burroughs (1837-1921) the friend alike of children and grown-ups, is called "The Foremost Nature-lover since Thoreau." He was born on an ancestral farm near Roxbury, in the Catskills-"the odd child" in a large family-for with the same environment as his brothers and sisters he was the only one to whom appealed the magic of nature and books.

From early boyhood he studied the doings of birds and insects and flowers, and so wise did he become that in later years specimens were sent him from all the world around for identification.

He was a school-teacher at seventeen and next was employed first in Washington and then in New York State, but business proved irksome. After 1874, he made his conventional home at "Riverby," West Park, New York, calling himself "a literary naturalist" and his occupation "grape culture."

His holidays are more fully associated with "Slabsides," an ivy-covered cabin further back among the