How happily, how happily the flowers die away! Oh! could we but return to earth as easily as they; Just live a life of sunshine, of innocence and bloom, Then drop without decrepitude or pain into the tomb. The gay and glorious creatures! “they neither toil nor spin,” Yet lo! what goodly raiment they're all apparelled in; No tears are on their beauty, but dewy gems more bright Than ever brow of Eastern Queen endiademed with light. The young rejoicing creatures! their pleasures never pall, Nor lose in sweet contentment, because so free to all; The dew, the shower, the sunshine; the balmy blessed air, Spend nothing of their freshness, though all may freely share. The happy careless creatures! of time they take no heed; Nor weary of his creeping, nor tremble at his speed; Nor sigh with sick impatience, and wish the light away; Nor when 'tis gone, cry dolefully, “Would God that it were day.” And when their lives are over, they drop away to rest, Unconscious of the penal doom, on holy Nature's breast; No pain have they in dying, no shrinking from decay. Oh! could we but return to earth as easily as they! CHAPTER CXLVII. OLD TREES. SHIPS. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. LIFE AND PASSIONS ASCRIBED TO INANIMATE OBJECTS. FETISH WORSHIP. A LORD CHANCELLOR AND HIS GOOSE. _Ce que j'en ay escrit, c'est pour une curiosité, qui plaira possible à aucuns: et non possible aux autres._ BRANTOME. “Consider,” says Plutarch in that precious volume of Philemon Holland's translating, which was one of the elder Daniel's treasures, and which the Doctor valued accordingly as a relic, “consider whether our forefathers have not permitted excessive ceremonies and observations in these cases, even for an exercise and studious meditation of thankfulness; as namely, when they reverenced so highly the Oaks bearing acorns as they did. Certes the Athenians had one Fig-tree which they honoured by the name of the holy and sacred Fig-Tree; and they expressly forbade to cut down the Mulberry-tree. For these ceremonies, I assure you, do not make men inclined to superstition as some think, but frame and train us to gratitude and sociable humanity one toward another, whenas we are thus reverently affected to such things as these that have no soul nor sense.” But Plutarch knew that there were certain Trees to which something more than sense or soul was attributed by his countrymen.