Horace Smith's "Hymn to the Flowers" was a continual delight to
me, after I made its acquaintance. It seemed as if all the wild
blossoms of the woods had wandered in and were twining themselves
around the whirring spindles, as I repeated it, verse after
verse. Better still, they drew me out, in fancy, to their own
forest-haunts under "cloistered boughs," where each swinging
"floral bell" was ringing "a call to prayer," and making "Sab-
bath in the fields."
Bryant's "Forest Hymn" did me an equally beautiful service. I
knew every word of it. It seemed to me that Bryant understood the
very heart and soul of the flowers as hardly anybody else did.
He made me feel as if they were really related to us human
beings. In fancy my feet pressed the turf where they grew, and I
knew them as my little sisters, while my thoughts touched them,
one by one, saying with him,--
"That delicate forest-flower,
With scented breath, and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.
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