The Evolutionist at Large

❖

Grant Allen

Dear Mother, take this English posy, culled.
In alien fields beyond the severing sea:
Take it in memory of the boy you lulled
One chill Canadian winter on your knee.
Its flowers are but chance friends of after years,
Whose very names my childhood hardly knew;
And even today far sweeter in my ears
Ring older names unheard long seasons through.
I loved them all—the bloodroot, waxen white,
Canopied mayflower, trilliums red and pale,
Flaunting lobelia, lilies richly dight,
And pipe-plant from the wood behind the Swale.
I knew each dell where yellow violets blow,
Each bud or leaf the changing seasons bring;
I marked each spot where from the melting snow
Peeped forth the first hepatica of spring.
I watched the fireflies on the shingly ridge
Beside the swamp that bounds the Baron's hill;
Or tempted sunfish by the ebbing bridge,
Or hooked a bass by Shirley Going's mill.
These were my budding fancy's mother-tongue:
But daisies, cowslips, dodder, primrose-hips,
All beasts or birds my little book has sung,
Sit like a borrowed speech on stammering lips.
And still I build fond dreams of happier days,
If hard-earned pence may bridge the ocean o'er;
That yet our boy may see my mother's face,
And gather shells beside Ontario's shore:
May yet behold Canadian woodlands dim,
And flowers and birds his father loved to see;
While you and I sit by and smile on him,
As down grey years you sat and smiled on me.

G. A.

By the same Author.

PHYSIOLOGICAL ÆSTHETICS: a Scientific Theory of Beauty (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co.)

THE COLOUR-SENSE: its Origin and Development. An Essay on Comparative Psychology. (London: Trübner & Co.)

THE EVOLUTIONIST AT LARGE

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THE
EVOLUTIONIST AT LARGE

GRANT ALLEN

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