Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/198

 of rich seal brown. Here in the rich sunshine Launcelot might well have said:

"Myself beheld three spirits, mad with joy, Come dashing down on a tall wayside flower."

Here Grapta interrogationis carried his ever-*present question mark from one dry leaf to another, asking always that unanswerable "why?" Here Pyrameis huntera, well named the hunter's butterfly, flashed red through the woodland, scouting silently and becoming invisible in ambush as a hunter should. Here a tiny fleck of sky, the spirit bluebird of the spring which the entomologists have woefully named Lycæna pseudargiolus, fluttered along the ground as if a new-born flower tried quivering flight, and brown Hesperiidæ, "bedouins of the pathless air," buzzed in vanishing eccentricity. But it was not for these that I lingered long on the seaward crest. There below me lay the bay that the exploring Pilgrims entered at such hazard, that but the day before had been blotted out with a freezing storm and gray with snow, now smiling in unforgettable beauty at my feet, bringing irresistibly to mind the one who sang,