decades gone forever. We never intend to become a man. We keep
our boy's heart ever fresh and ever warm. We don't care if the
whole human race, from the Ascidians to Darwin himself, assail us
and fiercely thrust us once more into short jackets and
knickerbockers, provided they allow an indefinite vacation in a
daisy field. The joy of childhood is said to be vague. It was all
satisfying to us once, and we do not intend to allow it to waste
in unconscious effervescence among the gaudier though less
gratifying delights of manhood.

It is, however, of daisies among the poets we would speak at more
length. In fact, to the imaginative mind, the daisy in poetry is
as suggestive as the daisy in nature. Philosophically, they are
identical; in the absence of the one you can commune with the
other. Thus unconsciously the daisy undergoes a metempsychosis;
its soul is transferred at will from meadow to book and from book
to meadow, without losing a particle of its vitality.

To premise with the daisy historically: Among the Romans it
was called _Bellis_, or "pretty one;" in modern Greece, it
is star-flower. In France, Spain, and Italy, it was named
"Marguerita," or pearl, a term which, being of Greek origin,
doubtless was brought from Constantinople by the Franks. From
the word "Marguerita," poems in praise of the daisy were termed
"Bargerets." Warton calls them "Bergerets," or "songs du Berger,"
that is, shepherd songs. These were pastorals, lauding fair
mistresses and maidens of the day under the familiar title of
the daisy. Froissart has written a characteristic Bargeret; and
Chaucer, in his "Flower and the Leaf," sings: