Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/49

 one of the Quaker youth at the academy, surrounded by those rosy maidens of the world's people, one of whom we suspect he loved, yet could no more tell it than can the steeplebush acknowledge how sweet is the companionship of the wild rose and how he hopes it may go on forever. Stray red cedars stroll about the lower slopes and climb gravely, while juniper, in close-set prickly clumps, seems to follow their leadership. The canny, chancy thistle holds its rosy pompons up to the bumble-bees, that fairly burrow in them for their Scotch honey, and the mullein would be even more erect and more Quakerly drab than the steeplebush if it could. It is erect and gray, but just as it means to look its grimmest dancing whorls of yellow sunshine blossom up its stalk in spirals, the last one fairly taking flight from the tip. Among all these strays the yarrow, whose aroma is as much a New England odor as that of sweet-fern or bayberry. The aromatic incense of this herb follows you up the hill and seems to bring the pungent presence of the poet himself.

Job's steepest hillside drops you in one long swoop to the road which leads through woodland