thoughts ever uttered by poet:

_Flower in the crannied wall
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all in my hand
Little flower,--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is._

Even more innocent, fresh and fair, is the bloodroot, with its snowy
petals, golden center and ensanguined root-stock which crimsons the
fingers that touch it. This is the herb, so the legend says, which the
Israelites in Egypt dipped in sacrificial blood to mark their doorposts.
As long ago as last November we dug up one of the papery sheaths and
found the flower, then about a half inch long, snugly wrapped in its
single leaf; and now the pale green leaf has pushed up and unfolded,
showing the fragile flower in all its beauty.

* * * * *

Strange contrasts we see in some of these April flowers. Some of them
open their star-like eyes for a day or two and dot the floor of the woods
with beauty and then their little contribution to the spring is done and
they are seen no more until another year. They bring us beauty and
sweetness and then they pass from us, like the sweet and childish but
perfect lives we all have known and loved. In contrast to such as these
there is the Jack-in-the-pulpit of the April woods which has no floral
envelope of beauty, no fragrance, no inspiration, so busy is it storing
up its swollen fortunes down in the bank, leaving behind it a tuber so
rank and tainted that even the Indians couldn't eat it until they had