easure his
word-conjuring can yield is chiefly of the sensuous order. The
following passage is, as Taine says, botany turned into imagination
and passion:--

"Have you felt in the meadows, in the month of May, the perfume which
communicates to every living being the thrill of fecundation, which,
when you are in a boat, makes you dip your hands in the rippling water
and let your hair fly in the wind, while your thoughts grow green like
the boughs of the forest? A tiny herb, the sweet-smelling anthoxanthum
is the principal of this veiled harmony. Thus, no one can stay in its
proximity unaffected by it. Put into a nosegay its glittering blades
streaked like a green-and-white netted dress; inexhaustible effluvia
will stir in the bottom of your heart the budding roses that modesty
crushes there. Within the depths of the scooped-out neck of porcelain,
suppose a wide margin composed of the white tufts peculiar to the
sedum of vines in Touraine; a vague image of desirable forms turned
like those of a submissive slave. From this setting issue spirals of
white-belled convolvulus, twigs of pink rest-harrow mingled with a few
ferns, and a few young oak-shoots having magnificently coloured
leaves; all advance bowing themselves, humble as weeping willows,
timid and suppliant as prayers. Above, see the slender-flowered
fibrils, unceasingly swayed, of the purply amourette, which sheds in
profusion its yellowy anthers; the snowy pyramids of the field and
water glyceria; the green locks of the barren bromus; the tapered
plumes of the agrosits, called wind-ears; violet-hued hopes with which
first dreams are crowned, and which stand out on the grey ground of
flax where the light radiates round these blossoming herbs. But
already, higher up, a few Bengal roses scattered among the airy lace
of the daucus, the feathers of the marsh-flax, the marabouts of the
meadow-sweet, the umbellae of the white chervil, the blond hair of the
seeding clematis, the neat saltiers of the milk-white cross-wort, the
corymbs of the yarrow, the spreading stems of the pink-and-black
flowered fumitory, the tendrils of the vine, the sinuous sprays of
honeysuckle; in fine, all that is most dishevelled and ragged in these
naive creatures; flames and triple darts, lanceolated, denticulated
leaves, stems tormented like vague desires twisted at the bottom of
the soul; from the womb of this prolix torrent of love that overflows,
shoots up a magnificent red double-poppy wi