Usually, the hymns for which I cared most suggested Nature in
some way,--flowers, trees, skies, and stars. When I repeated,--
"There everlasting spring abides,
And never-withering flowers," -
I thought of the faintly flushed anemones and white and blue
violets, the dear little short-lived children of our shivering
spring. They also would surely be found in that heavenly land,
blooming on through the cloudless, endless year. And I seemed to
smell the spiciness of bay berry and sweet-fern and wild roses
and meadow-sweet that grew in fragrant jungles up and down the
hillside back of the meeting-house, in another verse which I
dearly loved:--
"The hill of Zion yields
A thousand sacred sweet,
Before we reach the heavenly fields,
Or walk the golden streets."
We were allowed to take a little nosegay to meeting sometimes: a
pink or two (pinks were pink then, not red, nor white, nor even
double) and a sprig of camomile; and their blended perfume still
seems to be a part of the June Sabbath mornings long passed away.
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