I wonder if you love to fill your books with flowers.  It is a real bookish delight, and they make such a pretty diary.  My poets are full of them, and they all mean a memory—­old spring mornings, lost sunsets, walks forgotten and unforgotten.  Here a buttercup pressed like finely beaten brass, there a great yellow rose—­in my Keats; my Chaucer is like his old meadows, ‘ypoudred with daisie,’ and my Herrick is full of violets.  The only thing is that they haunt me sometimes.  But then, again, they bloom afresh every spring.  As Mr. Monkhouse sings:—­

    ‘Sweet as the rose that died last year is the rose that is born to-day.’

But I grow melancholy with an Englishman’s afterthought, for I coined no such reflections dreaming there in the wood.  It is only on paper that one moralises—­just where one shouldn’t.

My one or two regrets were quite practical—­that I had not learnt botany at school, and that the return train went so early.

WHITE SOUL

    What is so white in the world, my love,
    As thy maiden soul—­
    The dove that flies
    Softly all day within thine eyes,
    And nests within thine heart at night? 
    Nothing so white.

One has heard poets speak of a quill dropped from an angel’s wing.  That is the kind of nib of which I feel in need to-night.  If I could but have it just for to-night only,—­I would willingly bequeath it to the British Museum to-morrow.  As a rule I am very well satisfied with the particular brand of gilt ‘J’ with which I write to the dictation of the Muse of Daily Bread; but to-night it is different.  Though it come not, I must make ready to receive a loftier inspiration.  Whitest paper, newest pen, ear sensitive, tremulous; heart pure and mind open, broad and clear as the blue air for the most delicate gossamer thoughts to wing through; and snow-white words, lily-white words, words of ivory and pearl, words of silver and alabaster, words white as hawthorn and daisy, words white as morning milk, words ‘whiter than Venus’ doves, and softer than the down beneath their wings’—­virginal, saintlike, nunnery words.

It may be because I love White Soul that I think her the fairest blossom on the Tree of Life, yet a child said of her to its mother, the other day:  ‘Look at White Soul’s face—­it is as though it were lit up from inside!’ Children, if they don’t always tell the truth, seldom tell lies; and I always think that the praise of children is better worth having than the Cross of the Legion of Honour.  They are the only critics from whom praise is not to be bought.  As animals are said to see spirits, children have, I think, an eye for souls.  It is so easy to have an eye for beautiful surfaces.  Such eyes are common enough.  An eye for beautiful souls is rarer; and, unless you possess that eye for souls, you waste your time on White Soul.  She has, of course, her external attractions, dainty features,