’"The first night I saw it in flower, I was conscious of a peculiar delight, I may even say rapture.  Many white flowers are far more beautiful by day; the lily, for instance, with its firm, thick leaf, needs the broadest light to manifest its purity.  But these transparent leaves of greenish white, which look dull in the day, are melted by the moon to glistening silver.  And not only does the plant not appear in its destined hue by day, but the flower, though, as bell-shaped, it cannot quite close again after having once expanded, yet presses its petals together as closely as it can, hangs down its little blossoms, and its tall stalk seems at noon to have reared itself only to betray a shabby insignificance.  Thus, too, with the leaves, which have burst asunder suddenly like the fan-palm to make way for the stalk,—­their edges in the day time look ragged and unfinished, as if nature had left them in a hurry for some more pleasing task.  On the day after the evening when I had thought it so beautiful, I could not conceive how I had made such a mistake.

’"But the second evening I went out into the garden again.  In clearest moonlight stood my flower, more beautiful than ever.  The stalk pierced the air like a spear, all the little bells had erected themselves around it in most graceful array, with petals more transparent than silver, and of softer light than the diamond.  Their edges were clearly, but not sharply defined.  They seemed to have been made by the moon’s rays.  The leaves, which had looked ragged by day, now seemed fringed by most delicate gossamer, and the plant might claim with pride its distinctive epithet of Filamentosa.  I looked at it till my feelings became so strong that I longed to share it.  The thought which filled my mind was that here we saw the type of pure feminine beauty in the moon’s own flower.  I have since had further opportunity of watching the Yuca, and verified these observations, that she will not flower till the full moon, and chooses to hide her beauty from the eye of day.”

’Might not this be made into a true poem, if written out merely as history of the plant, and no observer introduced?  How finely it harmonizes with all legends of Isis, Diana, &c.!  It is what I tried to say in the sonnet,—­

          Woman’s heaven,
      Where palest lights a silvery sheen diffuse.

    ’In tracing these correspondences, one really does take hold
    of a Truth, of a Divine Thought.’ * *

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