To do this
requires a peculiar gift, one which our essayist has to an unusual
degree--an imagination that goes straight to the heart of whatever
he writes about, combined with a verbal magic that re-creates what
he has seen. Things are felicitously seen by Mr. Burroughs, and
then felicitously said. A dainty bit in Sidney's "Apologie for
Poetrie" seems to me aptly to characterize our author's prose: "The
uttering sweetly and properly the conceits of the minde, which is
the end of speech."
One can pick out at random from his books innumerable poetic
conceits; the closed gentian is the "nun among flowers"; a patch
of fringed polygalas resembles a "flock of rose-purple butterflies"
alighted on the ground; the male and female flowers of the early
everlasting are "found separated from each other in well-defined
groups, like men and women in an old-fashioned country church";
"the note of the pewee is a human sigh"; the bloodroot--"a
full-blown flower with a young one folded in a leaf beneath it,
only the bud emerging, like the head of a papoose protruding
from its mother's blanket." Speaking of the wild orchids known
as "lady's-slippers," see the inimitable way in which he puts
you on the spot where they grow: "Most of the floral ladies
leave their slippers in swampy places in the woods, only the
stemless one (/Cypripedium acaule/) leaves hers on dry ground
before she reaches the swamp, commonly under evergreen trees
where the carpet of pine needles will not hurt her feet.
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