ONE WHO LOVED NATURE

He was not learned in any art;

But Nature led him by the hand;

And spoke her language to his heart

So he could hear and understand:

He loved her simply as a child;

And in his love forgot the heat

Of conflict, and sat reconciled

In patience of defeat.

Before me now I see him rise —

A face, that seventy years had snowed

With winter, where the kind blue eyes

Like hospitable fires glowed:

A small gray man whose heart was large,

And big with knowledge learned of need;

A heart, the hard world made its targe,

That never ceased to bleed.

He knew all Nature. Yea, he knew

What virtue lay within each flower,

What tonic in the dawn and dew,

And in each root what magic power:

What in the wild witch-hazel tree

Reversed its time of blossoming,

And clothed its branches goldenly

In fall instead of spring.

He knew what made the firefly glow

And pulse with crystal gold and flame;

And whence the bloodroot got its snow,

And how the bramble's perfume came:

He understood the water's word

And grasshopper's and cricket's chirr;

And of the music of each bird

He was interpreter.

He kept no calendar of days,

But knew the seasons by the flowers;

And he could tell you by the rays

Of sun or stars the very hours.

He probed the inner mysteries

Of light, and knew the chemic change

That colors flowers, and what is

Their fragrance wild and strange.

If some old oak had power of speech,

It could not speak more wildwood lore,

Nor in experience further reach,

Than he who was a tree at core.

Nature was all his heritage,

And seemed to fill his every need;

Her features were his book, whose page

He never tired to read.

He read her secrets that no man

Has ever read and never will,

And put to scorn the charlatan

Who botanizes of her still.

He kept his knowledge sweet and clean,

And questioned not of why and what;

And never drew a line between

What's known and what is not.

He was most gentle, good, and wise;

A simpler heart earth never saw:

His soul looked softly from his eyes,

And in his speech were love and awe.

Yet Nature in the end denied

The thing he had not asked for — fame!

Unknown, in poverty he died,

And men forget his name.