To return, then, to his distinctive field, Kentucky, and his characteristic note of nature, one observes that a hand-book of the flora of his state could doubtless be compiled from his poems, so do they leave the beaten path in their range of observation; but it would be a botany plus imagination and sympathy, analysts keener than microscopes, and in it would be recorded the habits of the bluet, the jewel-weed, the celandine, the black-cohosh, the bell-flower, the lobelia, the elecampane, the oxalis, the touch-me-not, the Indian-pipe, and many another unused to hear its name rehearsed in song. One follows the feet of September to the forest Windowed wide with azure, doored with green, Through which rich glimmers of her robe were seen— Now, like some deep marsh-mallow, rosy gold; Now like the great Joe-Pye-weed, fold on fold Of heavy mauve; and now, like the intense Massed iron-weed, a purple opulence; or wanders under the Hunter’s Moon to watch the frost spirits … with fine fingers, phantom-cold, Splitting the wahoo’s pods of rose, and thin The bittersweet’s balls o’ gold To show the coal-red berries packed within. Autumn is apparently, however, little to his liking, and in his attitude toward it he reveals the Southerner; for it is not only Kentucky flora and fauna, but Kentucky climate which Mr. Cawein celebrates, treating Autumn not with the buoyancy that to a Northerner renders it a season of lusty infection, but almost wholly in its aspect of sadness. In his volume called _Undertones_ he has a group of poems upon the withdrawing year, sounding only this note, which is the prevalent one when touching upon the same theme in his other volumes. He glimpses … the Fall Like some lone woman in a ruined hall Dreaming of desolation and the shroud; Or through decaying woodlands goes, down-bowed, Hugging the tatters of her gipsy shawl; and speaks elsewhere of … the days gray-huddled in the haze; Whose foggy footsteps drip. Winter is encountered with far scantier cheer, and rarely receives the grace of salutation, as its face appears dire and malevolent to this lover of the sun. To follow Mr. Cawein’s work with such a purpose in view would be to present an interesting study in climatic psychology, for though no mention were made of the section in which he writes, the internal evidence is sufficient to localize the poems. Not alone the gracious side of the Southern summer is presented, but the fearful time of drouth when The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops, Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops, The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,— Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,— An empty wagon rattles through the heat.