“Thee’s about right there,” he answered. “And what does thee call that?” And his deft fingers singled out another flower.
“The pale aster in the brook,” she quoted.
He laughed, and went out of the room to put the flowers into water, but not before she had commented upon the splendid cardinal flowers scattered among the asters, and the brilliant sumach leaves and spikes which made a background in the gorgeous mass of color.
Whittier’s poems are rich in descriptions of flowers, and he sang of them as only one who loved them could do:
“For ages on our river borders,
These tassels in their tawny bloom,
And willowy studs of downy silver,
Have prophesied of Spring to come,”
he says of the beloved pussy-willows which open the floral ball of the year among the wild flowers of New England. For the trailing arbutus, our exquisite mayflower, “tinted like a shell,” he has many a word. And he knows the flowers, all of them, from the bloom of the “summer roses,” to where in the August heat,