You must part these
grasses and pass through them to see the thicket of golden-rod making
ready for the yellow festival later on. White cymes of spicy basil are
mingled with the purple loosestrife and back of these the fleabanes
lift daisy-like heads among the hazel overhanging the wire fence. Then
the elms and the oaks and in the openings the snowy, starry campion
whose fringed petals are beginning to close, marking the morning's
advance. In the moist places the Canada lily glows like a flaming
torch, its pendant bells slowly swinging in the breeze, ringing in
the annual climax and jubilee of the flowering season.
Across the road the monkey flower grins affably at the edge of the
grass and the water hemlock, with a hollow stem as big as a gun-barrel
and tall as a man, spreads its large umbels of tiny white flowers on
curving branches like a vase-shaped elm in miniature. Twice or thrice
pinnate leaves, toothed like a tenon saw, with conspicuous veins
ending in the notches, brand it as the beaver poison, otherwise known
as the musquash root and spotted cowbane. From its tuberous roots was
prepared the poison which Socrates drank without fear; why should he
fear death? Does he not still live among us? Does he not question us,
teach us? Yellow loose-strifes and rattle-box are in the swamp, and a
patch of swamp milkweed with brilliant fritillaries sipping nectar
from its purple blossoms.
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