Long ago, of a summer morning, threading with soundless paddle and slow-sliding canoe one of the quiet streams that wound like a blue vein across the sunburned breast of those marshes, I found in the deep grasses, that everywhere grew breast high, an illimitable garden of flowers. Looked at from above there was but the smooth, deep fleece of verdure--but thus intimate, close to the warm skin of these vast salt prairies, thousands of beautiful freakish blossoms revealed themselves--many-tinted, heavy as wax, fragile as cobwebs, perfumed, fantastic, multitudinous.... I stared a little, pondering, and then passed on carelessly about my childish business, unrealizing that I had found a picture and a parable to hang, after many years, upon the walls of my Little Room. January 2. Aftermath. If it might be, Life's harvest being past, And past the perfect fruitage of the soul, I yet might gather up some small sweet dole From out Time's fingers in the wide fields cast-- If it might be that though from out the vast Blue spaces all the tides of light did roll, There yet might linger some pale aureole To faintly flush my western sky at last-- I would forbear youth's lordly large demands, Nor swallow tears at sight of loaded wains Of others who all full and rich did go; Content that I, no more with empty hands, Might bear across the level darkening lands My sweet few sheaves home through the afterglow. * * * * * Transcriber's note: Obvious punctuation errors were corrected. The Greek quotation on p70 [preceded by the phrase "Achilles, blackly melancholy in his tent, heard the old voice cry"] is from Homer's Iliad, Book 9, line 319. One possible translation is: "and in one honour are held both the coward and the brave".