.-3
 
 f LIBRARY I 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 ! SAN DIEGO j
 
 o
 
 A YEAR BOOK 
 
 OF 
 
 Kentucky Woods and Fields 
 
 INGRAM CROCKETT 
 Author of " BKNKATH Br.UK SKIES AND ITRET 
 
 ILLUSTRATED Ji V Till-: A I TllOH 
 
 BUFFALO 
 
 OHAKLKS WELLS MOTTI.TON 
 HI 01
 
 THE WRNBORNE-SUMNEK Co., 
 
 PRINTHRS AND B( K)KM AK I-RS, 
 
 BUFFALO, N. Y.
 
 Ct IJear Book of 
 Kentucky U)oo6s an5 
 
 Co tfye memory of Clububon 
 anb to my own JDestern 
 Kentucky tDoobs anb ^ielbs 
 that knen? him for arofytle. 
 
 to l^are been untl) you 
 3n that free life anfc true, 
 tPrjen all your birbs passeb by 
 llncer tl]e nem-tDorlb sky.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Some of the author s verses in this book appeared 
 originally in THE YOUTH S COMPANION. For per 
 mission to use them here, due acknowledgement is 
 made.
 
 JANUARY. 
 
 FAR through the woods I have been led to-day the 
 quiet woods touched here and there with pale sun 
 shine. The way has not seemed long, nor cold, but 
 rather a holy way along which I have walked in 
 peace unspeakable. For the trees are my friends, and 
 their presence is a benediction. Beloved are they of the 
 night, the stars, the winds, and day by day they clothe 
 themselves in new beauty ; and upon them ever lies the 
 grace of all sweet memories. Memories of the rain that 
 came with the tender April sky memories of many a 
 long, bright Summer hour memories of the Fall, when 
 the light of a misty sun lingered and failed on the hills, 
 and the fallen leaves lay in all the winding \vays. 
 
 Now like pure spirits from whom have fallen the gar 
 ments of sensuousness, leaving the finer grace of resig 
 nation the waiting and the peace how still my brothers 
 stand in gentle meditation ! Of what glorious stature, 
 one in thought, their arms and fingers interlaced along 
 the sky! Each with his own strength, each leaning to 
 the strength of the other a brotherhood harmonious 
 whose music marks the march of the years.
 
 6 JANUARY 
 
 The oaks are the sturdiest of the brotherhood. The 
 white oak, clad in silver-gray, symmetrical, with droop 
 ing, sheltering arms, inviting all homeless creatures to 
 rest under its boughs. Tough are its muscles, hardened 
 by sun and frost for a hundred years. How the birds 
 who nest far above the earth love it, and now, that they 
 are gone, it still holds their deserted nests in its arms and 
 waits for the singing of their love songs again. The love 
 songs of the birds ! Dear oak would that I could have 
 been here, on a day long gone, with him who loved the 
 birds, who rested awhile at your feet to hear them sing. 
 
 The ground is still strewn with acorns each with its 
 folded mystery of life. The acorns of the white oak in 
 pairs, in shallow cups slightly serrated at the edge, best 
 beloved of the squirrels, and therefore scarcest of all the 
 mast at this season. Shaken down like hail when the 
 Frost Wind came by, how soon they will mount again in 
 new and tender form new leaf, new life. Alas they will 
 never be permitted to become even saplings, for soon the 
 wood shall have passed away, and the plow have pre 
 pared this spot for the seed that man will sow. 
 
 The passing of the woods ! I hear it like a minor 
 strain running through all the joyous music of earth. 
 The passing of the woods ! The fields are sad with the 
 memory of a mighty dead. Man, who spares not, will 
 one day call for the vanished with tears, but there will be
 
 JANUARY 7 
 
 no response, no return. The giants gone from the earth 
 forever, and in their stead a race of pygmies nurtured by 
 those who slew the nobler ones. O trees of God! O 
 prophets to whom are known the secrets of the seasons 
 is there none to honor you now. Will none pause before 
 you to love you will none hear your voice ? Shall not 
 the birds plead for you ? The woodpecker, the vireo, the 
 woodthrush, the flicker, the mocking-bird ? And the stars 
 shall they not speak your beauty as you lift your hearts 
 to them in the silence of the night? 
 
 Dark is the black oak, with great knotted limbs reach 
 ing out laterally. Dark , and knotted, and twisted dome 
 like, tall. Like a great candelabrum it stands in early 
 Spring, each pair of branching diaphanous leaves having 
 its long golden tassel. To-day, perhaps, it dreams of its 
 Springtime beauty, and sees, far-off, the rising mist of 
 green. 
 
 Scarlet oaks, pin oaks, overcups they are all here, 
 and with them the tulip-tree, tallest of the throng a 
 Saul among the tribesmen, handsome and straight : a cup 
 bearer of the Gods whose golden chalices April fills with 
 nectar. Lift your soul, O my brother, and rejoice while 
 you may, for you shall be first to fall, though upon you 
 first the light of morning lies, tracing your limbs in golden 
 gray along the dusky hills. 
 
 Scattered through the wood are little cedars miniature
 
 8 JANUARY 
 
 trees with fine, thick foliage prickly to the touch ; aro 
 matic. Year after year they have stood here, apparently 
 of no growth, dwarfed by the splendid boles about them. 
 What rich blue-green they wear ! What legends they 
 suggest of lands of pine ! And through the white days 
 how softly the snow lies upon them, bending down their 
 boughs, making a denser shelter for the birds, the spar 
 rows, that stay here the year round. 
 
 Now along the wayside there is scarce a trace of the 
 tall weeds that love this road, that grew rank here. 
 Pokeweed, ironweed, ragweed, horseweed ; tares of the 
 field that men cut down but that spring up again and 
 again, that cannot be wholly plucked up, waiting for the 
 Lord of the Harvest. Surely we have need of them for 
 all they are tares. They broider the way with beauty. 
 Man will garner enough wheat for his own ends. Nature, 
 who cares no more for man than for a weed, will see 
 that her myriad seeds of the commonest kinds fall into 
 good ground and bear flower and fruit. She has a place 
 for the magenta of the ironweed as well as for the gold 
 and white of the lily, and takes thought of it in her dark 
 chambers for the time ot the awakening. 
 
 The dark chambers where sleep reigns, where no light 
 comes, the dwelling place of seed and root, the under 
 world whence shall spring the countless spears and ban 
 ners of the great army of Beauty wherein no voice is
 
 JANUARY 9 
 
 heard where silence moves upon silence working out 
 immortal change lifeward and deathward forever. 
 
 I am walking to-day along the river, following Beauty 
 far-off, at times to my shame, but never forgetting, never 
 untrue seeking her revelation of all that ever has been, 
 of all that ever shall be. There is no higher writing, 
 only our eyes are dim from poring over books, and we 
 cannot read the writing on the hills, and our souls are 
 dull to the rapture and the glow. We seek for a prophet 
 and behold the woods and fields are full of prophecies. 
 The fault is in us. Fire-flies are we imagining we are 
 greater than the stars, and that our light is immortal 
 while theirs shall pass away little creatures who fondly 
 believe that the universe was made for us, and that color, 
 odor, flower, tree, stream, frost, cloud, are for our delight 
 only, and have no meaning apart from us. 
 
 How dark the river is bearing broad islands of drift 
 wood gulfward ; its waves white-capped and heavy with 
 sand washed down with the flood. 
 
 Here the river way is wide and low fringed with wil 
 lows, flexible keepers of the shore, whose greenish-yellow 
 bodies bend and interlace and catch the alluvial sediment 
 and so build out and out until the course of the river is 
 changed. Now they are packed with brush and small
 
 io JANUARY 
 
 trees, cornstalks, weeds, and heaps of spongy yellow 
 foam. 
 
 Constant the year round the cardinal flashes by, a 
 splendid bit of color against the gray. The great warp 
 of earth and sky shot through with a strand of matchless 
 red. The lifeless warmed by the living the terrible 
 beauty of the hurrying tawny waves softened by a 
 tenderer note. 
 
 Call, my cardinal ! My heart hears and answers you. 
 Could you but understand me, could I but whistle to 
 you a flute note so tender that you would know and 
 come to me that we might speak face to face in this 
 Wintry time what communion would be ours what 
 dreams of the Golden Age when men, birds, and beasts 
 shall be at peace when on them shall fall the perfect 
 light of Love. 
 
 Sing, my cardinal ! The angry river shall be caught up 
 far-off, in tender mist and brought back rainbowed about 
 you and your mate in April s nesting time. Sing to the 
 river and the sky how great is love ! Love lifting the river, 
 drawing down the sky, until they are one ; transfigured 
 wearing garments dazzling of marvelous loveliness. 
 
 And yet the sky, to-day, for all tis dark, is beautiful. 
 There are flashes of silvery and pale blue light through 
 the broken grays. Flashes that strike down like shafts, 
 smite the woods and the river and are lost.
 
 JAXUARY ii 
 
 And what Ishmaelites are the clouds. Advancing, 
 retreating, circling, passing on into the illimitable desert 
 beyond. One day, when the robin sings, a gentler troop 
 of nomads will come along the blue their white tents 
 gleaming in the sun. 
 
 Nightfall and the afterglow : the woods dark on the 
 horizon, the fields silvery with frost; the sky a revelation 
 of the innumerable shining company that stands in the 
 presence of the Lord of all the Earth. From horizon to 
 zenith they stand their wings touching led by the 
 flaming Cherubim. O Trappist tree dark-cowled before 
 them O host of purity! O type of sin! 
 
 Far through the quiet the scattered quail call. A 
 light twinkles low in a space of clear sky near the horizon 
 Night s first star that brightens, brightens, calling out 
 its brothers in service as the angels of the after-glow 
 withdraw into heaven. The blur of dusk comes upon 
 the fields. The sky line grows softer, and about it a 
 faint roseate light lingers. The earth chill rises with a 
 frosty odor. One last call of a quail like a flute-note 
 heard in dreams, and Night has fallen. 
 
 Let me stand face to face with Night. She has but 
 one voice now the voice of silence. By and by she will 
 speak with a thousand.
 
 12 JANUARY 
 
 Let me stand face to face with the silence of night 
 here in the Wintry fields when the sparrows are gone 
 to rest, when men are safely housed from the cold, 
 when on the thick tufts of broom-grass one may lie as 
 on a bed oh, the mystery of it all ! This solid earth a 
 point of light amid innumerable lights a frost crystal 
 on the fields of space changing, changing, changing 
 a flower, a star, a shadow, a bubble on the ocean of God. 
 
 And now the broom-grass begins to whisper. I am 
 lying close to its heart. So it keeps its secrets from those 
 
 who pass it by and reveals them to all who love it. 
 
 
 The broom-grass is the heather of these Western Ken 
 tucky hills, full of color, beautiful in all its growth. 
 Dark-green at first, it springs up by Fall in tall feathery 
 plumes that stand tawny and purple through the Winter. 
 The frost cannot cut it down the snows but gather in 
 its tops and drift over it for a\vhile the sleet leaves it 
 unharmed. Touched by thew r inds of January it dimples 
 and waves, now 7 silvery, now faded yellow, now purple, 
 now luminous in the sunshine, now cold in the shadow 
 rioting in color, sweeping on to the edge of the wood. 
 
 But, unlike the heather, the broom-grass is unsung. 
 The farmers have no use for it it is only broom sage 
 a good-for-nothing unconquered by the plow a de 
 generate impoverishing the hills, crowding out from the 
 fence corners planting a plume here and there until the
 
 JANUARY 13 
 
 hills are covered. And so the broom-grass is unsung of 
 man but not forgotten by the meadow lark. Winter and 
 Summer he sings of it, his home, the home of his loved 
 one of his nestlings. The Winter song of the meadow 
 lark how like a voice out of spirit land ; a call of some 
 gentle spirit to a companion spirit pent in the flesh ! Oh, 
 the yearning, the yearning, when that voice comes at 
 nightfall across the fields ! The world slips away the 
 border land is reached one lost awhile is there on the 
 broad meadows of God. 
 
 To-day the snow has fallen the second snow of the 
 Winter, light and feathery. How delicate are the six- 
 pointed stars of its crystals blossoms of infinite grace 
 that cling to the blossomless trees and grasses of the 
 dark earth. Far through the upper air I watched their 
 coming no gleam no break in the strange wilderness 
 of gray whence they came down, down, down cease 
 lessly transforming the woods, changing the tone of 
 the fields from purple to white ; clothing the slender 
 bushes and weeds with fluffiness melting into the river 
 without a sigh without a trace each flake a marvel of 
 beauty, counting itself nothing in the great sum of beauty 
 doing the will of God. 
 
 The White Earth ! The flakes have ceased to fall,
 
 I 4 JANUARY 
 
 and with the passing of the snow clouds it is not the old 
 earth but a new earth that greets us. No longer a light 
 absorber it reflects the light, bluish-white, dazzling. The 
 pond in the field is dark the woods are masses of cold 
 purple the familiar road is a patchwork of gray and 
 white. A disintegration and blending of light. Mil 
 lions of prisms scattering colors that reunite in wondrous 
 brilliancy. 
 
 There is nothing in all nature more delicate in color 
 than the shadows of the snow. The softest blue imagin 
 able as tender as the deeps in the bluest sky. But 
 this color is not seen by the casual on-looker. One 
 must stand for awhile and gaze steadily past the jeweled 
 crests into the dimples of the snow there it lies, the eyes 
 delight. 
 
 And with what rhythmical curves the snow lies upon 
 
 the earth ! 
 
 " God 011 His throne is eldest of poets, 
 Unto His measure moveth the whole! " 
 
 So moves the snow, taking its place silently in the 
 eternal circle. Curves by the river, curves by the brook, 
 curves over the angles of the rail fence, curves over and 
 under the little scrub oaks with their curled leaves heaped 
 with white so comes so passes the snow. 
 
 This morning in the rose of the dawn light, I walked
 
 JANUARY 15 
 
 fieldward over the snow that had become crusty by a day s 
 sun and freeze. I trod on jewels. All the prismatic 
 colors flashed from the hills. The ghost of the old 
 moon haunted the western treetops. In the east there 
 was no splendor of cloud, as is often seen on a Summer s 
 dawn, but a quiet unfolding of crystalline light, deepening 
 into day. The sky was unprofaned by smoke, and only 
 some sparrows and a flicker or two were with me in the 
 unforgetable beauty of that hour.
 
 FEBRUARY. 
 
 TO-NIGHT I hear the call of wild geese floating 
 down from the starlit silence the unexplored depths. 
 Their leader is apparently confused, not steadily wedging 
 way northward, but circling now near the earth now 
 up again, while his followers, at intervals, answer his call 
 clamorously. 
 
 There is much water in the fields and the geese are 
 doubtless seeking some quiet haven for the night, some 
 slough of the cornfields where they can find food and 
 be at rest. Soon they will drop silently shadows into 
 shadow where the gaunt trees of the deadening keep 
 watch. 
 
 Over all the woods and fields, this morning, lies a 
 heavy mist charged with sunlight. High on a hill before 
 me a tall, slender sweetgum thrusts his bare arms into 
 clearer light, but his companion trees are muffled in pearl 
 and blue fringed with gold. And out of the mist come 
 the robins a big flock of them trooping to the black- 
 gums where the berries hang thick laughing, a high
 
 FEBRUARY 17 
 
 shrill laughter, crying: Peep, peep, peep, peep\" 
 Crowding the limbs, darting up and down in ecstacy 
 madcaps with Spring in their blood while over the 
 way one sings a Spring song a troubadour lilt to the 
 wake-robin and the first yellow violet. 
 
 Now and again the robins seem to winter here, and 
 may be seen by twos and threes and in flocks cheery 
 notes and bits of color on the darkest days. But some 
 months they vanish altogether, and the Winter fields 
 miss their presence and their song. 
 
 O woods that call me out from town to-day ! O woods 
 that cluster round a quiet water, mirror of the sky 
 where loiters many a dream, and Mystery stoops for a 
 glimpse of her face in the heavenly deep. O woods 
 my soul salutes you ! I lie at your feet. 
 
 Around the pond the reflection of the sycamores, 
 pecans, gums, is like loosely woven fringe trembling 
 into the depths. Trees a hundred yards off are reflected 
 as faithfully as those on the bank. Some of the branches 
 in reflection move upward with a twisting, augur- 
 like movement. The water is never still even here where 
 no wind touches it for bubbles rise from the bottom, 
 burst and circle out in fine rings over the smooth surface 
 of the pond. There is an almost imperceptible current
 
 1 8 FEBRUARY 
 
 near the shore in which a little white moth, strange sur 
 vivor of Summer, is whirled about, and often, with a 
 series of bubbles, the whole face of the pond is wrinkled. 
 
 What inexpressible beauty there is in the "still waters 
 of the Psalmist. The still waters where the tenderer 
 flowers of the soul blossom the dwelling-place of Peace. 
 
 And what inexpressible natural beauty there is in these 
 still waters this February day ! What delicate blending 
 of local and reflected color ! Darkening the color of the 
 reflected sky, of the trees, of the overhanging banks the 
 water is itself apparently a soft brown. A bush, light 
 gray on the bank, is dark gray in reflection : the pencil- 
 ings of the clouds less sharply defined in the sky beneath 
 than in the sky above. And when the stars come here, 
 how gently they must shine from this under-world as 
 gently as the shining of a holy life. 
 
 And how lovely are the banks of the pond mossed in 
 green and brown. Mosses woven in and out among the 
 tree roots with gray and mottled lichens earth carpetings 
 of incomparable beauty spread everywhere along the quiet 
 ways of Nature, protecting them, mingling tones of green, 
 gray, brown for the feet of men, of squirrels, of birds ; 
 for the feet of the passing Seasons. 
 
 To-day a fine pebbly snow has fallen, and has been
 
 FEBRUARY 19 
 
 whirled along into little drifts but not a particle has 
 clung to the trees, whose dark limbs are tossing and 
 swaying in the wind. How different the effect of these 
 "hard" snows from that of the "soft" snows of warmer 
 days ! The soft snow falls silently its flakes lighter than 
 down ; the hard snow falls swiftly, hissing and rattling 
 through the trees and rolling in great brilliancy along the 
 earth. 
 
 This afternoon the sunlight is clear gold and I am out 
 on the brilliant snow. The air sparkles like fine cham 
 pagne. Frost crystals dance about me and gleam along 
 the twigs of the maples in arabesque. Long lilac shadows 
 stretch across the unbroken glades of white pink tints 
 glow on every crest. All out-of-doors is like a great 
 bell full of sweet vibrations from the hammer of the cold. 
 The wheels of a passing wagon ring musically along the 
 beaten road. The snow crunches beneath my feet at 
 every step with a note of buoyancy. A woodpecker taps 
 the springy march of lustiness, and, answering, my heart 
 beats : " On and on out to the gods of Youth, Health, 
 Power ! " 
 
 Following the call I am come, with the sun a little 
 space above the horizon, to a fairy land a land strewn 
 with diamonds and turquoise. All along the way I have 
 seen and read the hieroglyphs of the birds the record, 
 so full of interest, of flicker, cardinal, junco, sparrow,
 
 20 FEBRUARY 
 
 robin, crow, and ot that ne er-do-weel, the blue-jay. I 
 have noted, too, places of tragedy of struggle of life 
 against life that goes on unceasingly. 
 
 Nevertheless I am come to a peaceful, a beautiful 
 land. I who must have my tragedies who must leave 
 a writing of my way across the fields of life am come 
 to a shining place of lilac, blue, pink and gold. 
 
 For the edges of all the little eddies and depressions in 
 the snow are bright gold, and in all the shadows is a lovely 
 blue. Looking down through half-closed eyes I see at 
 my feet a mid-summer sky flecked with clouds of shining 
 amber. Heaven below me as above me I a mote in 
 the immortal light of Beauty. 
 
 The sun like a good prophet comes with the promise of Spring. 
 While yet all the fields are in white and no brooks sing. 
 
 So sings my heart this evening before the woodland 
 where the topmost twigs are netted in delicate tracery 
 against a pink, rose-golden and purple sky. The tints 
 are so perfectly blended, so luminous, that the effect is 
 beyond words, beyond art to express. Silence only can 
 stand before it can interpret it. "God is in His Holy 
 Temple ; let all the earth keep silence before Him." 
 
 Flocks of black-throated sparrows whir up before me 
 in a road cut deep through sandy hills that buttress the
 
 FEBRUARY 21 
 
 lowlands of the river. The sparrows are feeding on the 
 hack berries along the way, and their notes are very 
 sweet a sort of musical chatter with minor cadences the 
 half sad, half merry music of a banquet where there are 
 no bidden guests, but where he " who loveth best " is 
 always welcome. 
 
 There is another music, no less charming to me, among 
 these hills the music of the scrub-oak leaves touched 
 lightly by the wind. These trees do not obey the Fall. 
 Their leaves turn a rich dark red or maroon, but they 
 cling to the boughs during the Winter, and until they are 
 pushed off by the swelling buds of Spring. They are 
 like fine grained leather now, curled and crisp, and their 
 rustling is peculiarly melodious : the longing of the Wind 
 the response of a sympathetic aeolian. 
 
 Close at hand grows the blue ash, lichened from the 
 ground to its middle limbs. Lichens, the parti-colored 
 seals of many years come and gone, attesting their herit 
 age here. Lichens like the random brush marks of 
 some master of mellow color who paused here once on 
 a day a master of blues, grays, browns painting with 
 a brush given him by a sun and rain crowned Morning 
 beautiful with tenderest beauty. 
 
 Everywhere about me low tones predominate. The 
 willows are soft yellow-green. The old rail fence is light 
 gray, broken with brown. The broom-grass is full of
 
 22 FEBRUARY 
 
 rich purple, of silvery tints. The earth banks, disinte 
 grated by freezes, thaws and showers, and like diminutive 
 avalanches among the roots that overhang the road, are 
 Indian yellow stained with dull red. There is not a 
 flaming color in earth or sky, from this point of view ; 
 and yet there is no sombreness about the picture. In 
 stead it is a restful pleasure to the eye a meditation 
 before which one who loves the colorist will stand with 
 uncovered head. 
 
 This hillward path reveals beauty after beauty to-day. 
 A wonderfully rich sky the sunlight warming the purple 
 of the ragweed fields the meadow-larks like winged 
 flutes softly blown. I am following in the steps of the 
 great bird lover up the river, out across the hills into 
 the broad levels of the uplands doubtless in his day a 
 noble forest. Now the plant beds for tobacco are being 
 burned, and the smoke of their burning tells of the pass 
 ing of oak, gum, ash, hickory, poplar. The fragrant 
 smoke ! The soul of the wood melting into the universal 
 beauty. 
 
 Toward the west there is a belt of woods that makes a 
 dark, fringed sky line, above which the sky is silver- 
 fleeced and golden barred. Northward the colors are 
 purple and greenish-blue, with pools of ultra-marine in
 
 FEBRUARY 23 
 
 the wool-pack. And the little pools by the wayside are 
 no less rich in color. Even their muddiest water catches 
 some of the splendor above, as in the most defiled soul 
 there are glimpses of heaven. 
 
 Suddenly the sun enters a long cloudless space of green 
 lying between purple clouds and the horizon line, and 
 the fields are flooded with intense yellow light : a splen 
 dor that lights the woodland penetrating into its depths, 
 bringing out in strong relief bole, limb, and twig. A 
 rail fence at the edge of the woodland, wet with melting 
 frost, turns to glistening yellow the shadows on it blue. 
 Far-off the woods are olive gray, and the snow patches 
 on the hillsides are bathed in pale, lustrous gold. Surely 
 this is a mount of transfiguration ! 
 
 Ah, the redbird singing ! The beauty of the sky in 
 tensifying the beauty of his breast. Song and color 
 mysteries that lift me and bear me on I know not whither, 
 far through the wonder of the afterglow. 
 
 Marvelously the light came as marvelously it fades. 
 Now a rose flush on the higher, darker clouds ; now 
 brighter gold at the edge of the cloud line ; now patches 
 and shreds of flaming gold in the pale, clear green ; now, 
 as the sun sinks, pink, cold purple, brilliant carmine : 
 carmine that burns across the hills in red fire, that creeps 
 up the trees, steeping their twigs in its glory, that fades 
 not as I watch, though all the other colors of the sky are
 
 24 FEBRUARY 
 
 darkened, that seems as if it might remain holding back 
 the night, making darkness its slave forever. 
 
 Yet, O glorious light, you even you must obey the 
 law of change. A dark finger pushes up against your 
 luminous shield : the finger of Fate. To-day, on these 
 darkening hills you have cast your last radiance. To 
 morrow 
 
 At this time of the year the earth is like a lute that 
 trembles with the first light prelude of a master. Under 
 the leaves are found the poems of Spring the earliest 
 editions very delicately bound wake robins, white hearts, 
 violets. The woods and fields are waiting to welcome 
 the bluebird and the sugarbird the first with his trually , 
 trually, trually ! the dearest song of all ; the second with 
 his insistent call for Peter, Peter, Peter! Blades of green 
 peep up through the brown. The dormant sap begins 
 to dream. The maples take on slowly a fuzzy red. The 
 purple grackles, the cowbirds begin to swing in the tree- 
 tops; and by the pond "looking through glass windows" 
 may be heard hyla a feeble peep, peep, that hushes for 
 the nearing foot. 
 
 I have heard it the Spring song of the Flicker ! 
 "Quick, quick, quick, quick ! " All day long it has rung 
 across the fields a lusty love call.
 
 FEBRUARY 25 
 
 And the bluebird is come ! I have not seen him but 
 I have heard him somewhere above me, and with him are 
 many memories of orchards in bloom of the spring at 
 the foot of the hill of the log house with its clapboard 
 roof weather-stained and curled of the hollow in the 
 gatepost where I knew he would build his nest and greet 
 me with a love song of the great log barn at the edge 
 of the wood, its floor white with saltpetre from accumu 
 lated tobacco stalks, and where he was sure to be flying 
 in and out between the logs, making music with the pur 
 ple martin under the rafters all these memories come 
 with the first note of his song the simple, homely life 
 of which he is the poet. 
 
 For a while the bluebird left us for three or four 
 Springs and from many parts of the country bird-lovers 
 lamented him. " Oh, to see him again ! Oh, to hear 
 his song!" So the threnody ran through the land. 
 Now he has proved himself unforgetful of us : he is con 
 stant as of old. Singer of the blue wearing its colors 
 melodist of Faith. 
 
 Weave, weave, weave, with fingers deft and slim, 
 
 O maples tall against the sunset sky, 
 A cradle robe of witchery soft and dim 
 
 In which the nestlings of the dreamer Wind may He. 
 
 The oriole is come, singing his good-night song to the
 
 26 FEBRUARY 
 
 new moon low in the west. Gently the maples weave 
 in the sunset colors upon the loom of quiet. Weaving in 
 the bright threads the crimson, the gold weaving in 
 the pale yellow, the cold purple, the gray. Weaving 
 in the stars the early stars, lilies of the garden of Night. 
 Weaving in the oriole s song the shadows silence 
 sleep.
 
 MARCH. 
 
 THIS morning the old moon is hanging in the treetops, 
 a curled and silvery feather, and at its side a little 
 dewdrop star trembling with light. The eastern horizon is 
 netted with twigs dark gray and rose-gold. The ground 
 is frozen. March the fickle has turned his back on Spring. 
 
 Now is the time to watch for the advance couriers of 
 the birds, and to ponder the mystery of their coming. 
 Along the highways of the air far beyond the range of 
 the naked eye they have traveled by day, by night across 
 seas and lakes following the rivers looking for their 
 appointed nesting place, the home of their love making 
 for years. Coming, coming ! The timid by night, the 
 bold by day until their eyes and hearts greet the wel 
 coming hills, the familiar tree, the sheltering covert. And 
 then the song that, like an old-fashioned hardy flower, 
 speaks to us from the looked for haunt. 
 
 What a flight is theirs warblers, thrushes, vireos ! 
 Below, above their little bodies the deep of night ! The 
 clouds to confuse ; the gleaming, man-saving light of 
 some stormy coast to lure them to death. On and on in 
 silence, their wing beats marking time for the advancing
 
 28 MARCH 
 
 season by twos, by threes, by hundreds, over the sleep 
 ing earth, the lifted shadow of trees, the mist trails of 
 rivers. Stopping day by day for food, but with one pur 
 pose urging them ever one strange longing for a certain 
 place where their mates shall be chosen, their vows be 
 said, their young reared. 
 
 Are the pewees and blackbirds I hear this morning 
 just come? It is impossible to tell. They may have 
 been here for a week, awed into silence by the winds and 
 the hordes of wild clouds rushing across the sky afraid 
 to launch their tiny boats of song on such a rough sea. 
 I know only that till the frost is gone there are pauses jn 
 the music one day the choristers hid not a note ; the 
 next day, with the waving of a baton of sunshine, a look 
 of the master, the symphony of Spring breathes, rings 
 through wood and field. 
 
 March, for all its bluster, has golden days. This is 
 one. The more charming in contrast with the hurly- 
 burly yesterdays of the month. To-day my friend the 
 cardinal is making love. I can hear him now pleading : 
 "Sweet, sweet, sweet do, do, do! " and I catch a glimpse 
 of him dropping like a splendid flower into the ravine 
 where his sweetheart waits. The mist scarfs are wound 
 about the hills and trail in the river. The track of the
 
 MARCH 29 
 
 sun on the water is flame-color, over which wild ducks 
 skim ; and on the horizon the long, dark, graceful lines 
 of their kindred waver toward the west. 
 
 In sheltered places the first Spring Beauties begin to 
 show. Soon they will cover the hills with pink, white, 
 lavender. Like the strains of a dainty madrigal are 
 Spring s first flowers delicate, simple, graceful. 
 
 Winter again with a high wind and flurries of snow. 
 The birds ate silent but the great organ of the wood 
 pours forth a solemn music responsive to the touch of 
 the wind. This is the music of the soul of the imagina 
 tion. Sitting by a majestic black oak I can feel its mas 
 sive frame tremble with the harmony. On through the 
 woods the trees sway to the noble rhythm while the 
 music swells dies away now shakes the earth with its 
 rushing diapason. 
 
 The Dante-like souls are here to-day. I can see 
 them now avast procession sad browed, steadfast eyed, 
 dusk clothed treading the way of purgatory, of hell, of 
 heaven for whom there is but one God : He who sits 
 upon His everlasting throne but one thought the 
 thought of Him of those who love Him of those who 
 serve Him. Impassioned contemplationists spirits who 
 walk apart passing, passing into the unknown.
 
 3 o MARCH 
 
 This afternoon the fields are whitened by a sudden wet 
 snow. The plover are circling and calling, their wings 
 showing white against the sky. They seem to enjoy 
 the storm, breasting the wind and swinging down its 
 current at a great rate flashing over my head in 
 gray and silver. How my pulse quickens as I watch 
 them and the spirit of boyishness grows strong within 
 me. I too will breast the wind and race with it 
 its comrade, its brother. Its vigor shall be mine 
 we will taste together the old free life, faring where 
 we will. 
 
 The quail have many paths through the tall tangled 
 "redtop" in the fence corners places of restfulness, of 
 coziness from the whirling storm. Having raced with 
 the wind I lie at full length in one of these bird homes, 
 and put out my tongue for a taste of the snow that is 
 sweet with the tang of earth and cloud. Close at hand 
 are the j uncos for whom good Mother Earth has grown 
 tall weeds with nourishing seed. What a picture they 
 make under the snowy ironweeds and how he praised 
 them who knew them so well. 
 
 As I enter the deep woods the storm seems to be only 
 in the treetops. The spider s webs, woven on a warmer 
 day, are like handkerchiefs of exquisite lace, catching and 
 holding the snow crystals that sift slowly through the 
 boughs.
 
 The woods at night ! The familiar trees, friends of the 
 day, how strange. Whispering, whispering beckoning 
 writing dark legends on a faint scroll of sky. A flut 
 ter of wings, a shaken bush sends thrills to my finger-tips. 
 A twig startles me with its cold, wet touch. I know the 
 rough oaks and hickories, the smooth bole of the painted 
 beech, but to put my hand upon them does not reassure 
 me. They are members of another brotherhood, living 
 in another world. The screech-owl, their unseen com 
 panion spirit, moans near me in the darkness. Skeleton 
 trees rub their arms together with a creaking sound. 
 All around me there are voices low, indistinct : then I 
 hear the bay of a hound ; the dark fancy passes. My 
 hand conies in contact with a sassafras twig ; I taste its 
 wholesome flavor and am no longer afraid. 
 
 And now, caught in the meshes of the treetops, I see 
 the stars. Occasionally I hear a faint speep from some 
 bird disturbed on its roost. I take a long breath of the 
 woody odors, pungent with frost. My feet find and fol 
 low a well-loved path. 
 
 The woods at night ! I stand apart from them and see 
 their dark tops against the sky, rising out of the shadow 
 of the fields in solemn beauty. What watch they keep 
 noble warders at the Gate of Silence. What thoughts 
 are theirs 01 storm and calm through a century of 
 seasons ! What peace, what death struggles they know
 
 32 MARCH 
 
 in their depths ! What communion they hold with the 
 stars, the clouds, with the little birds that know their 
 boughs and nestle in them through the long watches. 
 
 What spirit of the innumerable host of Beauty led me 
 by the river this morning to hear that sweet sparrow 
 song ? To him I vow an offering of the first spicewood 
 blossoms : for twas a lovely strain and one that I shall 
 not soon forget. I had been following some of the mas 
 ter melodists of the mind indoors when the spirit called 
 me ; and I went forth with their songs in my heart to 
 hear a song they loved, by a constant member of the 
 Great Choir. It was by the still, wintry river amid 
 brown and broken weeds, with scarce a bit of green, but 
 the singer had heard a whisper from the reddening cat 
 kins a secret and knew. 
 
 The red maple boughs are misty with color, and 
 through them breaks the orange sunrise. Overhead the 
 sky is soft gray with bluish streaks. Robins, bluebirds, 
 cardinals are singing. The robin : 
 
 "Spring is here, yes sir! 
 Spring is here, yes sir ! " 
 
 " Sweet, sweet, sweet do, do, do! What cheer ? What 
 cheer f" sings the cardinal; but simpler, tenderer, the
 
 MARCH 33 
 
 song of the bluebird. Cheery, yet of a loveliness, a 
 something that has passed from the earth. 
 
 Here would I worship, with my very soul 
 Enraptured with the beauty of this hour 
 This tender light the unfolding of the flower 
 Of sunset. 
 
 A kingfisher is circling above the maples sounding his 
 rattle, his splendid blue and white flashing on the rosy 
 afterglow. Far to the southwest there is a succession of 
 sunlit peaks lifting their heads in the violet air. Who 
 has not yearned at times for that mountain land of the 
 sky? 
 
 The woods are yet dark and wintry looking, streaked 
 with the white of the sycamore. Somewhere in the 
 brown weeds the sparrow-hawk sees his quarry and 
 hangs against the sky, apparently motionless. In the 
 low lands the spring peepers are at it again in high 
 pitched yet mellow chorus, answering one another in 
 minor and dominant chords. 
 
 The music of the frogs, the smell of the upturned 
 earth, the swinging hand of the sower. Notes of the 
 simple life that brings forth men of heroic mold for whom 
 the world waits.
 
 34 MARCH 
 
 Holy symbol of toil, the plow ! With it the husband 
 man, high priest of the fields, goes forth in the dawning 
 and is sprinkled with the heavenly dew, touched by the 
 heavenly fire. From it shall flash back the shekinah ot 
 of the hills on it, at eventide, the shadows lay hands ot 
 peace, and through the night earth shall press it close 
 to her bosom and bless it for her fruitfulness sake. 
 
 Out through Hurries of sleet, 
 
 Out from the ways of men, 
 I go on joyous feet 
 
 For the wild-spice blooms again. 
 
 Buds encased in crystal. All the morning sleet has 
 fallen, hissing through the trees and dead grass, and as 
 it falls it rolls into little pockets among the crisp oak 
 leaves by the path caskets filling with pearls. 
 
 Occasionally the sun strikes along the ice-covered 
 limbs with marvelous color effect. The trees wear rain 
 bow hues, drip golden rain. 
 
 The clouds are torn into shreds, driven before the 
 wind hurled over the horizon. The tree tops are 
 whipped together there is a steady roar like that of a 
 swiftly passing train. Now and again a snow flake a
 
 MARCH 35 
 
 raindrop falls. The tide of life is rising, the green spray 
 is tossed high on the forest ; but there is a struggle be 
 tween the old and the new ; bud and frost, blossom and 
 snow flake, and the fields resound with the clang of 
 battle. 
 
 But rest you here for a space little snow flake, rest 
 you here for a space on the bosom of the first violet in 
 these deeps of calm. The last flower of Winter, the first 
 of Spring. So let your life melt into its life, your beauty 
 into its beauty, one, as God wills.
 
 APRIL. 
 
 WEEPING willows in a gauze of delicate pea-green, 
 black berries tipped with sparks of sap-green, 
 the swelling buds of the sweet gum, gray-green ; such is 
 the color scale this April morning. Bright notes set in 
 brown bars. Spring s fire, the ashes of Winter. 
 
 Snipes run along a marshy place in the meadow or 
 stand on the hummocks of saw-grass, their images re 
 flected in the water, where also lie the white clouds and 
 the blue sky. Here soon I will look for the dainty blue- 
 eyed grass, that suggests some quaint old-fashioned 
 place where the mowers go down into the meadow with 
 the music of the whetting of scythes and the fragrance 
 of the heaped swarth. Here, too, a heavy bass joins in 
 the chorus of the peepers a solo, then silence, a duet, 
 and again the chorus in high pitched unison. 
 
 The sparrow hawks are at their courtship. The female 
 poised lightly on the topmost twig of a sweet gum, 
 a spire-like twig so small that the hawk seems resting in 
 the air. Here she waits the coming of her lover, and 
 presently with the airiest of flutterings they fly over the 
 wood and drop into its secret places.
 
 APRIL 37 
 
 Redwing has come, the minstrel of showers and the 
 rainbow. What is more delightful than his song as he 
 glides with gently moving wings into a tree top? 
 " 0-ka-lee ! " calls one, " 0-ka-lee-ah!" is answered 
 across the meadow, the notes like those of a flute blown 
 from the depths of a crystal spring. And the scarlet on 
 his wings, is it not caught from the flame bearer ot the 
 sunset to glow here in this greening world ? I pause and 
 listen. Far away, so faint I can scarcely hear it : 
 " O-ka-lce ! O-ka-lce-ah ! " O dreaming time! O 
 meadows of April ! O tender voices that are come again 
 at the call of love ! 
 
 On the fresh, plowed fields a myriad gossamers twinkle 
 in the yellow-green sunlight. Where do they lead, who 
 knows ? these threads of a fairy spinner. On through 
 space the old earth swings caught in their golden meshes. 
 
 The apricots are in bloom filling the orchards and 
 gardens with white. Warm showers have brought out 
 the lilacs, spireas, bush-honeysuckles. The air is full of 
 delightful odors sowed broadcast by the Great Sower. 
 Dainty touches of pink are in the gray. The peaches 
 are in bud with scattered blossoms like pink and white 
 snowflakes on their leafless boughs. This fine color of 
 early Spring is akin to that of a clear dawn, delicate,
 
 3 8 APRIL 
 
 refined, luminous. Or like the music of a mandolin lightly 
 touched under the tender beauty of a new moon, while 
 the rose of the afterglow is in the west. As far as the 
 eye can reach, valley and hill are covered with this blos 
 som snow. 
 
 This afternoon there is an apparent pause in the ad 
 vancing tide. The sky is lowering, the lanes are de 
 serted. Streams overflow their banks, the lowland road 
 is a mjuddy current. Yet what is more beautiful than 
 the rain fringe trailing across the fields, the gray above 
 met by freshest green below. No artist ever put such 
 lovely color on canvas. The rain comes on in showers, 
 the big tough-skinned raindrops falling heavily and 
 slowly, then the increasing patter, the steady downpour, 
 the gleam breaking a silvery way through the clouds. 
 
 The red maples, shining with moisture, show the 
 deepest notes of color there are many broken reds and 
 grays. The meadow brook is white with cascades a 
 charming picture that Theocritus or Herrick would have 
 loved. 
 
 Another tidal wave of cold. All the week it has 
 rained and the peachtrees and apricots look chill and
 
 APRIL 39 
 
 forlorn in their bedraggled Spring finery. Their blos 
 soms strew the ground with dingy white. The birds, 
 too, that a week ago were singing so rapturously, have 
 left the world musicless. Robin skulks in the bushes, 
 his love-song hushed by a touch of sorrow. So the 
 world is full of silent voices that once were its joy so 
 sadness waits on all. 
 
 The redbuds, wild cherries, and coffee beans are in 
 bloom the jonquil s gold is scattered at each doorstep. 
 Thrushes are singing the vireo is here. The wood 
 violet, with its unfailing grace, broiders the woodland path. 
 
 I have left the green world to-day to breath the 
 balm of the red cedars that crown a height overlooking 
 the road and the lowlands toward the river. They are 
 the holy brothers who year in, year out watch over the 
 dead. All the birds know them and fly to them for rest. 
 The shy, first blossoms put forth their beauty here pro 
 tected from the bitter winds, warmed by the resinous 
 mold. Windflowers, little children in white, lift here 
 their hands in prayer, with the bluebells, unafraid in 
 God s quiet room. White violets, brides of Heaven 
 doves sitting trustfully on their nests tanagers like 
 scarlet flowers of song, wrens, field-sparrows, juncos 
 undisturbed by the noises of the world, rest here, cared
 
 40 APRIL 
 
 for, in this Cloistered place, where only the murmur of 
 prayer is heard, the litany of the wind. 
 
 Tis good to be here where a voice from the hereafter 
 speaks gently to the soul: ^ Be not afraid!" And 
 as I sit looking up through the dark green branches, 
 starred with blue-gray berries, the sunlight is sprinkled 
 in benediction and lies in little flames around me. A 
 dove, a voice of the soul bidding farewell to the world, 
 at peace with God, calls through the stillness. A wood- 
 thrush lifts his heart in song, earth is swung nearer heaven. 
 
 Broad fields of rich brown earth new woven by plows 
 
 A cloud of green on the willows, and flame on the redbud s boughs. 
 
 At a wayside gate opening into a field whose crest is 
 crowned with tall pines, I find my first apple blossom, 
 very pink and fragrant. The springtide is at its loveliest 
 when the apple is in bloom. It is the very crest of the 
 wave breaking in pink and white foam blossom spray 
 blown across the fields. And the scent of the apple 
 blossoms. Once on a day she wore them in her hair 
 their perfume you will not forget. 
 
 The dogwoods are in full white ; it is time to plant 
 corn to go a-fishing. What a beautiful border their 
 blossoms make, with those of the red bud, about the feet 
 of the tall gums, maples and oaks. In all seasons the
 
 APRIL 41 
 
 dogwood is one oi the handsomest of trees. In Spring 
 white, in Summer its layer-like branches rich in light 
 and shade; in the Fall bright with red berries and 
 maroon and reddish leaves, and in Winter its fine up- 
 curved twigs tipped with grayish buttons. 
 
 Under the dogwoods the first butterfly flutters past 
 like a wind-blown blossom. May apples, the umbrellas 
 of the country children, are thick on the hill slopes 
 each holding up, half hid, its waxen flower. And dotted 
 among the trees are Sweet Williams 
 
 "that grow for happy lovers." 
 
 But sweeter than them all are the blossoms of the sassa 
 fras now clustering on bare boughs overhanging the 
 creek. How the bees, true critics of all wood sweets, 
 love them ! Their odor has nothing of the hothouse 
 about it. It is altogether of out-of-doors wonderfully 
 fresh and spicy. As the sassafras tree draws into its 
 roots the raciness of the old free life and offers it to man, 
 so the sassafras blossom draws from the rainbowed air 
 its pleasantest tang the very spice of dew and sun and 
 shakes it down on the hearts that wait it. 
 
 The river bank is purple with orchids under the amber 
 and green tipped boughs of the sugar maple. And with 
 the orchids scores of Dutchmen s Breeches daintiest of
 
 42 APRIL 
 
 flowers with coarsest of names. The oriole turns like an 
 orange flame about the high limbs pecking, singing, 
 eating. But why he should try to stand on his head 
 while he sincrs I am unable to find out. 
 
 Now April like a vestal feeds the flame 
 That glows, rose-red, on many a tasseled lamp 
 Upon the black oaks ; and the redbuds camp 
 
 Along the creek ; and Bob White tells his name. 
 
 The maple leaves are like young squirrel s ears. The 
 titmouse is calling incessantly, and there are many fine 
 silvery-fluted sparrow songs blown gossamer-like from 
 the ravines and sheltered places. The wood warblers, 
 little bodies so puzzling to a bird lover, are coming in, 
 now silent, now singing with the ebb and flow of Spring. 
 Gulls that have beat their way up from the Gulf flash 
 white wings over the river, resting for a moment on 
 its waves, and off again in graceful circles. The cotton- 
 wood, a giant of the riverside, has put on its silver-gray. 
 The haze on the distant wood has deepened. The colors 
 change through softest gradations across the fields the 
 blue of far-off woods, the gray of the nearer, the misty 
 green of the willows by the shore, the flash of the green 
 sparks and fire of the larger leaves. 
 
 Close to the ground in a brush-heap is chewink, busy 
 with the very earthy thought of making a living. He is
 
 APRIL 43 
 
 alternately a poet and a fellow of business, and he puts 
 on one coat or the other as the mood moves him. Pres 
 ently he will leave the earth far beneath him, and from 
 the highest twig of the highest tree he will shake out his 
 happy bell-song. 
 
 There is much nest building going on. The birds fly 
 by with timothy straws, feathers and bits of twigs in 
 their bills ; the female, as a rule, doing the work while 
 the male does the singing. This seems scarcely to com 
 port with the other lover-like qualities of birds, their con 
 stancy ; their united care of their young, but doubtless 
 the song of the singer repays the worker as it repays me 
 a hundred-fold. 
 
 The " Weavers " and the " Carpenters " are the chief 
 nest builders represented here, and soon many homes will 
 be ready for the eggs and the nestlings. 
 
 The vireos and orioles are the airiest of builders. 
 Many a strand of tough-fibered bark is used in swinging 
 their nests from the outer limbs. Sometimes these nests 
 are wrecked during a storm, turned upside-down, and the 
 eggs or the young dashed to the ground. Then how 
 touching is the scene with the parents hovering over the 
 ruin, calling helplessly above their dead. They cannot 
 understand, nor can we, Life, Death, Sorrow. 
 
 But these tragedies are the exception. The birds are 
 optimists ; they teach us many a lesson of joy; of bright
 
 44 APRIL 
 
 living. They have their humorous side. The flickers, 
 for instance, are a funny lot. I have seen them, the 
 female sitting very upright and sedate at first, six or seven 
 feet from the male, through many a courtship, and it 
 equals anything in the " settin up " of the mountaineers. 
 The whole process of hitching a "cheer" nearer and 
 nearer is carried out to perfection, only instead of a chair 
 the male has at his disposal a series of bows that would 
 do credit to a Grandee of Spain. With these he pro 
 ceeds to captivate his dear, swelling out his chest to show 
 its fine mottlings, bending his neck to display the splen 
 did band of red there, and all the time saying " Sweeter, 
 sweeter, sweeter, sweeter." This elaborate affair may be 
 carried out on the ground or on a limb high in the air 
 it is all one to the flicker, if he wins his sweetheart. 
 
 To-day the spirit of Halcyon is in the woods. April 
 stands at the portal through which she must shortly 
 pass forever. For though one may come again bearing 
 her name, bringing the similitude of her offerings, yet 
 this April with all she gives of hope, memory, beauty, 
 can never return. Yet how joyously she goes. 
 
 Long shadows, tremulous, lie on the wold, 
 Dappling the sunny spots of dewy gold. 
 Love, hope are woven by swift shuttle wings, 
 A net of joy in which the whole earth swings.
 
 MAY. 
 
 I AM introduced to May by a pair of summer tanagers 
 that flutter before me as I walk toward a bordering 
 wood to watch the unfolding of the leaves. Joy be with 
 you comrades ! Flash across the glad earth. Thread the 
 the shadows with light May salutes you, my heart bids 
 you Godspeed. 
 
 And now that I am come to the wood, lady-slippers 
 gleam, sun-touched, in the glade where the mold is like 
 a great sponge full of moisture and covered with ferns 
 and mosses. Wake-robins, sweet williams, yellow 
 violets crowd the hummocks and peep above the rotting 
 logs. Life is silently transforming all about me. The 
 interlaced twigs are veiled in green. The unbeaten 
 center of the woodland road is pink, white, green, yellow. 
 The hoof-prints, marks of winter hauling, are fringed 
 with delicate fungi. So soon Nature reasserts herself 
 when man has passed so soon the wilderness that blos 
 soms as the rose overflows its borders and once more 
 carpets the fields with its own beauty. 
 
 The locusts are in bloom their fragrance like the
 
 46 MA Y 
 
 letter of a dear friend. Along the lanes they stand, 
 marking the way to quiet homesteads or clustered in 
 the hollows of the hills to invite one beneath their shade, 
 that is beloved of all fine sweet grasses. It is in one of 
 these hollows that I have found rest this afternoon, with 
 the sun well down on the distant treetops and the song of 
 a plowman in my ears. It is here only that the bluegrass 
 comes to perfection in Western Kentucky the affinity 
 being strong between these two aristocrats of the State. 
 And so the grass at my feet is thick and long, a pure 
 sap-green in the sunlight lusty and dark in the mottled 
 shade. Overhead the blossoms hang, white in dull sage 
 green and the hum of bees is drowsy music there. Let 
 the world busy itself about work this hour I will " loaf 
 and invite my soul." 
 
 The black oak bears a blossom of song to-day the 
 mockingbird. Sitting at the foot of the tree I lift up 
 my heart to the blossom above. The fragance of all 
 song is there the joy and abandon of it amid the 
 green leaves and under the blue sky. O men, toiling in 
 the fields below, listen ! What is better in all your phi 
 losophies than this ? Love, love, love amid the green 
 leaves and under the blue sky. Do you hear it ? Do 
 you understand it ? You with your labor shall find no
 
 MA Y 47 
 
 higher wisdom for love is the fulfilling of the law. Ah, 
 the very oak trembles with the ecstacy of the music ! 
 What dreams encompass me ! The plows flash at the 
 turning of the furrows the sheep bells shake out their 
 soft melodies the mists trail along the low meadows 
 the creek sparkles at the break by the hillside but for 
 me all are but the lights, shadows, voices of a dream, 
 while I float by on that marvelous stream of melody. 
 Through all the depths of my being its beauty thrills 
 till silence and a strange awakening tell me he is gone 
 " the slim Shakespeare of the tree." 
 
 To-day, by chance, I almost heard 
 
 The secret of a little bird, 
 
 A tender secret whispered low 
 
 To him whose answering heart would know. 
 
 It was in a thicket and I had crept in very silently and 
 sat with white wood-lilies about me. The little fellow 
 sitting on the edge of the nest looked down and nodded 
 as if to say : " It s all right ; I feel able to work for a 
 dozen now." 
 
 How much of beauty the fields would lose if all the 
 thickets were cut away ; and how the birds would suffer. 
 Here the meadow sweeps round the thicket s walls of 
 green, and the mower goes by, but in this green retreat 
 all is quiet and peace. Tender fungi grow in its flower
 
 48 MAY 
 
 rooms, fed with the palest dew of sunlight. Wood 
 thrushes make it their home, and many a shy wood 
 warbler whom one would never know save by waiting 
 here. 
 
 Leaving the thicket the path leads me along the edge 
 of the thick woods where the fleur-de-lis grow. A slug 
 gish water creeps around the feet of the tall scarlet oaks, 
 and in it are lit these flowers of gold, blue, and white that 
 shine for the coming of dusk. 
 
 White moths are wearing circles against the vermeil 
 sky, and all the trees are still and dark as ebony. The 
 dusk is merged in night. 
 
 Out of the glory of the dawn the oriole comes with a 
 song. Redwings, song-sparrows, answer him. The 
 blackberry bushes, in pure white, are bowed with the 
 weight of dew pearls. The sky is softest, clearest amber 
 with rose and straw-colored clouds at the zenith. 
 
 Dawn ! Symbol of all that is pure, of all that is 
 holy. Inspiration of song the Day Spring, inexhaust 
 ible, flowing to refresh the world. Out of it come hope, 
 life, gladness. From darkness men have turned their 
 faces toward it seeking God in it He has revealed 
 Himself in His greatest beauty. Ages ago it called men 
 to prayer its light led them from their own country
 
 MA Y 49 
 
 into a land of better things and touched their hearts 
 with heavenlier aspirations. Happy is he who to-day 
 finds the old, old religion in it the still small voice 
 the Eternal Beauty. 
 
 The " raincrow " is calling by the creek. What a 
 silent fellow he is ! How noiselessly his long grayish 
 body slips through the trees. Do the clouds gather at 
 his call ? Is he a prophet of darkening skies, of 
 showers ? The farmers hold him so but I have proved 
 him a false prophet in more than one dry season. Like 
 his cousin over seas he seems but a wandering voice 
 to hundreds who have heard but have never seen him. 
 A mystery of the woods, associated with the screech-owl 
 and kindred birds of ill-omen. 
 
 This woodland that the raincrow loves is also the 
 home of many sweeter-throated birds as shy as he : 
 the warblers. High above me the sunlight falls in 
 golden-green showers yet softly and subdued as befits 
 singers who are shy. 
 
 Yet even in this half light, and in this quiet they do 
 not often venture from their lofty arches where they flit 
 swiftly about as if holding the earth unworthy of their 
 touch. How gracefully and deftly the flycatchers take 
 their food in midair. One cannot conceive of a daintier
 
 50 MAY 
 
 way to satisfy hunger. It is apparently all color and 
 rhythm with green boughs and violet sky for canopy 
 the pure air for a table and in its midst the sweet 
 boquet of the woods. 
 
 The warblers, by reason of their elusiveness,by turns 
 elate and depress the bird lover. He sees them, he 
 knows them to-day, to-morrow he may follow them only 
 to know them not. But how pleasant is a speaking 
 acquaintance if one may never know them better. What 
 joyous ways they lead one in through all the changing 
 year. In the dawn light, in the dusk light, in paths un- 
 trod by many feet, in lanes that loiter through quiet 
 fields and by still waters, out from the gossip, the petty 
 bickerings, the clash of creeds into the freedom of God s 
 sweet room of out-of-doors. 
 
 One day the world w r ill miss these "little brothers of 
 the air " ah, the silence, the regret, then. 
 
 On the still surface of the creek water spiders are 
 sporting, trailing ripples that glint with changing color. 
 
 As I stand on the bridge looking at a jam of logs in 
 the creek, through which the water gurgles in foamy 
 cascades, a measuring worm, that humble tailor of the 
 woods, is taking the measure of my coat sleeve, errati 
 cally, but doubtless with a purpose beyond my ken. 
 Passing on the hillward way I meet with king birds and 
 larks, and a flock of bobolinks following a rooting hog,
 
 MAY 51 
 
 the backs of the singers glistening in the level sunbeams, 
 so music oftentimes waits on material things . Not a note 
 now have these poets of Spring. They, too, must eat. 
 
 Now is the high tide of song. The balm of early 
 Summer is in the air, the wind inundates the woods and 
 fields with low, sweet sound. Butterflies, little white and 
 mauve Hesperia and splendid Papilios flutter by. A 
 song-sparrow,* on a dead tree just back of an osage 
 hedge, sings rapturously ! A low note thrice repeated 
 and then an exquisite cadenza. What art yet how art 
 less ! Surely his sweetheart must believe it the sweetest 
 love song in all the wide world. 
 
 The meadow across the way is bright with the blos 
 soms of blue-eyed grass shy stars in this heaven of 
 tender green where dwells the gentle spirit of Spring. 
 
 Lying at full length on the meadow, in the timothy 
 and clover, drawing in deep breaths of their fragrance, 
 one with the bees, the butterflies, the clouds, the birds, 
 communing with the soul of Beauty : the deeps above 
 sown with islands of white, the gentle heart of the earth 
 the wonder, the dream what more shall I desire ? 
 Not the unfolding, the making plain of it all ; not a 
 vision of the haven ; not of the why I am here, a mote 
 in the sunbeam of God no, only that my heart may be 
 
 4
 
 52 MAY 
 
 as fragrant with love as the clover is fragrant, that I may 
 learn of it. 
 
 A crane flies low "across the meadow toward some 
 quiet willow-bordered water. The lireodendrons lift their 
 deep cups of reddish-green gold to the thirsty bees 
 cups full of nectar, thick with pollen. 
 
 The fences are overrun with dogroses, earliest of the 
 wild rose clan, in peaceful tartans of varying pink. Oh, 
 for a day to follow where they lead, far into the " back 
 country," where there is many a bramble "thicket, where 
 wild grasses push their way across the neighborly roads ; 
 where comes no pageant of the proud ; where often pass 
 the barefooted children of the poor. There, it seems to 
 me, He would have walked, had He been here in the 
 olden time, led by the flowers of the way to the flowers 
 of the heart there, it seems to me, He would have 
 tarried for a while under some humble rooftree while 
 some Martha prepared for Him her best, some Mary 
 set at His feet. There the mourning dove would have 
 touched His heart with her sorrow ; the wood-thrush 
 have led Him with joyful song through glades of wild 
 grape and fern. 
 
 The brown thrasher sings now, while the wheat is 
 taking on richer green a clear velvety green, over which
 
 MAY 53 
 
 waves of color pass : purple shadow after purple shadow 
 rolling on and on, breaking at the rail fence that skirts 
 the hill. Gentian brightens the fence corners. The wet 
 places are blue and golden with flags. The road is 
 edged with wild phlox, corn-cockle, mint. The gold of 
 morning is set in the purple glooms a wonderful tapestry 
 of rich, varied pattern, of lustrous texture. The air is 
 filled with the fragrance of wild grape, most grateful of 
 all woodland odor,s. There is something like an old 
 sweet song in this perfume a song one keeps in his heart 
 and only sings to a kindred heart at the gate of memory. 
 Ah, what joy to be in the fields now to rest on the 
 heart of the Great Mother beating with renewed hope ; 
 to forget the poor gabble of the market-place in the 
 message of the wind ; in the putting forth, for lands 
 beyond the horizon, of gleaming cloud sails; to hear 
 what the streams say, rich with opened springs of 
 treasure ; to be led as simply, as joyously as a little 
 child. 
 
 Bright glades of sun, the vesper singing clear, 
 The new life breaking thro the old the gleam 
 
 Of passing wings and ever far and near 
 
 The heart-heard music of a long, long dream.
 
 JUNE. 
 
 From the far fields and the woods and ever within me are ringing 
 
 Voices I know and yet know not, voices of crying and laughter: 
 
 Of the dusk-coming prophet stars, of birds in the dawn-light 
 
 singing 
 
 Of one that is strange as the wind s is, from the mist hid land 
 of hereafter. 
 
 And aye with the voices silence, silence the shadow unlifting 
 
 The shadow of God on my soul, the word He has left unspoken 
 The echoless deeps of His space, the clouds that forever are 
 
 drifting 
 
 By His luminous islands of love, and that bring to my heart no 
 token. 
 
 THE trumpet vines are blowing reveille a hundred a 
 thousand coral bugles sounding the morning call of 
 peace. Blessed music ! Blessed fields that know not 
 the strife of brother against brother, whose blossoms are 
 unstained with blood. Along the lane the trumpet vines 
 stand, the lane little travelled, shadowed all day by tall 
 grasses and overhanging boughs, the lane leading by an 
 oak, an elm, low drooped, majestic kings reigning jointly 
 over all this fair realm. The oak a hundred feet tall 
 with the spread of a hundred feet, dark, muscled like a 
 giant athlete, a druid holding aloft bunches of mistletoe, 
 a bird lover holding the young birds safe from storms,
 
 Now is the high tide of Summer.
 
 JUNE 55 
 
 safe against his great heart. The elm of broader sweep, 
 of finer fibre, more delicately appareled, cleaner limbed. 
 Kings they have been for a century, dearer and dearer to 
 the heart of the earth, to the birds, to the cattle at noon 
 day, dearer, God will, to man, that they may be kings 
 for a century more. 
 
 The corn is being plowed, the plowman, like an artist 
 working back and forth over his canvas, changing the 
 cornfields from gray-green to a rich brown streaked 
 with yellow- green. A light mist lies on the woods. 
 Wild sweet potato vines are woven in and out the fence- 
 rows, hanging them with pink -throated silvery blossoms 
 in which the bumble-bees revel, coming out drunken 
 with nectar and yellow with pollen. Milkweed has put 
 on its finest purple. Gay white and yellow moth-mul 
 leins shake their butterfly flowers against the lips of the 
 wind, the white umbels of elder make the path like one 
 leading up to the palace of the good Haroun Al Raschid. 
 A little brook slips under the willows, darkens, and 
 dances out again laughing in the sun, laughing up in the 
 eyes of thrashers, black birds, sparrows, jays, wrens who 
 have come here to taste its wares. A Baltimore oriole 
 preens himself and sings within a few feet of me. Now 
 is the time when his voice may be heard at its best with 
 that of his cousin of the orchard, fine feathered fellows 
 with delightful songs. " It s very good to be here.
 
 56 JUNE 
 
 Hear it? Know it?" he sings to me, to the loitering 
 clouds, to the dimpling water. 
 
 The wheat is nearly ready for the harvest, gold 
 crested, garnet-stemmed, rippling softly or rioting with 
 little whirlwinds that dance this way. Dimpling, rust 
 ling, running in waves to the woodland, a far-off dark- 
 green bar. Beauty can express herself no more fully, 
 can add no more delicate touch, no fresher color. The 
 fields are full of sap. There are no sere tips on the mul 
 titudinous grasses or leaves. No dust clouds hang along 
 the horizon, the noon-light has not lost the freshness of 
 the dawn. The plumage of the birds is lustrous, full. 
 Each leaf is in its place, each cell crowded with clilor- 
 ophyl, the woods reflecting light in sparkling showers, 
 diffusing it in tenderest yellow-green. The innumerable 
 insect army is under way, the air trembling with a 
 myriad wings moth, butterfly, beetle, ant, grasshopper, 
 the unseen highways of the grass are alive with multi 
 tudes of travellers. The green world is busy, glad, blos 
 som laden. 
 
 The vanilla-like perfume of the buttonbush is wafted 
 from the creek. The clustering wild onions are like a
 
 JUNE 57 
 
 fine-meshed net dotted with tufts of magenta. The 
 shadows grow long stretching in faint violet far across 
 the hills. The west is deep rose with tall castles of 
 purple cloud Dusk waits at the horizon. 
 
 The night call of the birds To rest to rest to 
 sleep ! So soon the final sleep comes the last good 
 night. The fading light the shadow the quiet. God 
 keep you, O Vesper! God hear your evening hymn ! 
 God keep you all safe little birds ! 
 
 In the harvest. The shocks are like the golden tents 
 of a mighty, splendid army. Redwings and song-spar 
 rows are singing along the fence-rows and in the tall 
 timothy that borders the wheatfield. The hedges are 
 bright with butterfly weed. Dickcissel tells his name. 
 The tall weeds appear ironweed, ragweed, goldenrod. 
 Along the lane leading to the deep woods flocks of blue 
 birds go before me, touching the fence posts with bits 
 of blue singing tnially, trnally , trually. What dear 
 fellows they are ! How welcome their song ! Never 
 growing old always fresh and good like the love of a 
 true heart. At the edge of the wood the red-eyed vireo 
 is singing declaiming rather: " Do you hear it? Do 
 you believe it? " 
 
 In the woods the thick foliage of gums and maples
 
 58 JUNE 
 
 almost excludes the sunlight. The undergrowth is a 
 dense tangle of darkest green. Greenbriers, pawpaws, 
 hickory, hackberry all woven together over mossy logs. 
 Sharp rough grasses thrust up their blades to the sun 
 light sticktight, sneezeweed, false foxglove lending a 
 faint note of yellow to the green. Here indeed is the 
 music and the silence. 
 
 It is not the music of birds but the music of castanets 
 that charms here by the ravine above the river. The 
 cottonwood keeps time to the measure of the wind, its 
 leaves sparkling. Castanets, innumerable guitars ! Now 
 silent, the leaves motionless, now breaking forth sud 
 denly, shaking the cool melody over the earth. Mean 
 while a broad-leaved catalpa is still, the surrounding 
 woods seeming but listeners to the cottonwood, the 
 locust silently swaying as if to the rythm of a dance. 
 
 Elder and wild hydrangea peep above the edge of the 
 gorge. The cricket heralds mid-summer. The homely 
 camomile is scattered grayish-white beside the way. 
 
 The nameless weeds ! Everywhere in the fields, the 
 woods, by the roadside. Myriads whose names we do 
 not know, each with its own place in the plan of Nature,
 
 JUNE 59 
 
 its own note in the scale of color, supporting countless 
 lives too small for the eye of man, careful by bloom, by 
 pollen that its own kind shall not perish. What more 
 are we who cut them down, than they, on the broad 
 fields of God? How nameless are we save to some 
 patient, loving heart that sought us out and called us by 
 name? 
 
 Sometime after sunset this evening the light in the 
 west, seen through a maple, was exquisitely beautiful ; a 
 most delicate blending of pink and pale luminous blue. 
 The very leaves seemed to catch the colors, the tree was 
 transfigured. Far above the light was reflected in faint 
 orange tints on wisps of cloud. 
 
 Masses of wild sunflowers and elder by the creek and 
 mirrored in its depths. Bob White ! Bob White ! sound 
 ing clear from the stubble. Young redbuds spreading 
 diaphanous, reddish leaves by the fern-like foliage of the 
 wild thorn. Rudbeckias, jewel weeds, bordering the new 
 ground, blackberries ripening so runs the varied color 
 through this calm June day. The heat waves tremble 
 in spirals of blue fire. Up, up mounts a hawk, his wings 
 glistening like burnished gold in the sunlight ; up, up
 
 60 JUNE 
 
 now, with swift folded wings, dropping a thousand feet ; 
 now up again, screaming. Hundreds of butterflies are 
 drifting over, high in the air. A rabbit stops before me 
 panting, listening ; then doubles silently as the tall weeds 
 are shaken by the pursuing dog. The air is heavy with 
 the scent of ragweed. The leaves of the corn droop, 
 stroked by invisible fingers of heat for greater fruitfulness. 
 
 Oh, to feel the wind of the upland blow 
 Against my cheek to hear the fine free song 
 Of the indigo-bird ; to see the shadows long 
 Of tall oaks deepening in the sun s last glow, 
 And silvery mists across the fields trailed slow. 
 
 Going out of town this afternoon, with the sun and the 
 wind at my back, there lay before me a beautiful color 
 effect: white maples, along a woodland of elm, sycamore 
 and other dark foliage trees, wind blown in blue-gray 
 almost white. The maples had been planted at regular 
 intervals, and their upturned leaves reflected the sunlight 
 with remarkable brilliancy. The sky was ribbed with- 
 shining white; glistening in spots like a silver gauze vail. 
 My friends the sparrows seemed to like this breezy 
 weather that swung them so happily on pliant boughs. 
 
 The sumac is putting forth its yellow blossoms after a
 
 JUNE 6 1 
 
 night of wind and rain. The clouds break into cumuli. 
 Above are little pools in the gray, glimpses of the calm 
 above the great silence. Many leaves, tossed by the 
 wind, show their silver linings, their delicate veining. 
 
 On days like these I have often heard the finest bird 
 song, though, as a rule, birds sing best on bright days. 
 I shall not soon forget the song of a brown thrasher 
 heard when clouds were gathered in purple masses over 
 head ; when there was no gold of the sun on all the 
 hills ; when the face of Nature was sad ; when the wind 
 breathed in mid-summer the requiem of Fall. He was 
 hidden somewhere in thick maple boughs. The joy of 
 all glad days flowed from his throat in so tender, so 
 triumphant a strain that for me all things were made 
 new. It was a triumph of hope ; the clear shining of 
 the inner sunshine of love. 
 
 Yet the storm clouds, are they not beautiful for all 
 they darken the earth and hush the great bird choir ? 
 The storm clouds of a June day rolling up from the 
 horizon in a deep purple column the advance guard, the 
 " Wind Makers " marching steadily up the sky while 
 behind come the surging, charging masses of gray. 
 Far across the upper sky they rush furiously in de 
 tached squadrons pass and are lost to sight while the 
 great infantry of the rain beats upon the earth in flash 
 and roar.
 
 62 JUNE 
 
 And when the storm has passed while yet the air is 
 moist with the trailing nimbus if it be near sunset what 
 wonderful light is diffused in softest most luminous yel 
 low over earth and sky making the woods look gray. 
 A strange light-apocalypse clothing familiar things with 
 awful beauty. 
 
 This afternoon the clouds are dark, fantastic. A rift 
 in the west lets through a flood of orange light. Over 
 head the " wool pack" holds the moon dwarfed and wan. 
 The tide of Summer begins almost imperceptibly to re 
 cede. There are brown spots on the green, the wild 
 rose leaves are scattered, the young birds are being 
 trained for flight. The sunsets are richer in flaming reds 
 and yellows. Corn is " breast high; " tobacco "covers 
 the hill ; " the wheat has been threshed or is in stack. 
 There are grassless beaches of brown cracked earth 
 about the ponds, the creek is a chain of pools. The 
 brown thrasher sings at rare intervals; the bluebirds 
 seem to have slipped away as quietly as they came. 
 Soon June will follow.
 
 JULY. 
 
 T~"\ AWN. In the east a few feathery clouds, rose-edged. 
 * There is no earth taint in this pure light pledge of 
 the eternal youth of Beauty. Mist covers the earth, the 
 birds flitting up from its trembling bosom to greet the 
 new morning. Sheep bells tinkle from hidden pastures. 
 The wood smoke from a wayside cabin rises straight, a 
 thin column of blue melting into the upper air. What 
 expectaney ! The strings are in perfect tune for the 
 hand of the Master they tremble with unexpressed har 
 monies. In the north a little while ago lay a long slen 
 der line of clear, dark-purple ; now, as the light grows, 
 how it changes. It is edged with gold ; barred with rose ; 
 set with spikes of silver ; and now it parts and the ends 
 float away, lessening, lessening, sinking into the blue 
 like snow flakes. The first fine needles of the sun ap 
 pear ; the mist is shaken ; the green bosom of the earth 
 shows here and there. Doves, black birds, mocking 
 birds, jays, song sparrows, vireos, cardinals all are sing 
 ing, in the very rapture of harmony. " Joy ! joy ! " is 
 the song; but a shrike, the butcher-bird, sits musicless 
 and sullen near a thorn tree where his victims are
 
 64 JULY 
 
 impaled. He, too, can sing when he will, but that vision 
 of his cruelty will ever rise before me. I cannot love his 
 song. 
 
 The mist is gone save here and there along the wood 
 land a silver strand is blown. So heavy is the dew the 
 fields give forth an odor like rain-sprinkled dust. A 
 heron flaps lazily by, a clumsy flight but steady and 
 strong. Elder hangs thick over the fence, fragrant, 
 heavy with dew pearls. Wild phlox and tansy nod to 
 me between the rails. 
 
 As the sun lifts clear above the tree tops flocks of 
 cirro-cumulus clouds gather in the west, bluish-white, 
 glistening. By a little pool that reflects the splendor of 
 the sky are water arum, blue lobelia, wild carots, and at 
 the edge of the wood the painted beech. 
 
 The painted beech handsomest of trees ! To it belong 
 the tenderest green of Spring, the clearest hues of Fall. 
 Fine branched, its leaves ribbed daintily, its deep shade 
 loved of mosses brown and green, of lichens blue and 
 gray. Smooth boled, dome-like, limbs drooping, a lover 
 of rich subdued color tones : a Dupre of the woods. 
 
 How the day changes ! Beauty after beauty, cloud 
 and sun, sunburst and shower, cumuli and nimbus. The 
 leaves, the wild flowers, are brilliant, animated. The 
 river a glimpse through the trees is blue-gray, still, 
 mirror-like, save where dimpled with rain.
 
 JULY 65 
 
 Sunset. Masses of cumuli lined with gold. How our 
 pigments fail before the noble canvas of Nature. How 
 dull, how hard, for all they may express of the immortal 
 original. 
 
 It is cloudy today, but over a fertile rolling country I 
 follow him. " Witchery, witchery, witchery," he sings 
 to me over the nodding tops of the wild parsnips. 
 " Witchery, witchery!" Yes, good singer, there is 
 witchery in this happy way blossomed and canopied 
 with silver and blue. Yes, my golden-throated minstrel, 
 I- follow a winding path over rounded hills to a dear old 
 bridge I know, where the water slips over the brown 
 stones with a song as sweet as yours. Lead me all 
 the way : sing with the creek, " Witchery, witchery, 
 witchery ! 
 
 The meadow larks, too, lend me their songs. What 
 do they care for the clouds trailing lower and lower ? 
 Are not the showers their friends shall not the world 
 be fresher when the old dust-laden "sunlight gives place 
 to the new, as pure as the breath of Dawn ? 
 
 And as the first drops fall the doves are taking dust 
 baths in the road medicinal doubtless, which they 
 seem to enjoy hugely diving and fluttering where the 
 dust lies deepest.
 
 66 JULY 
 
 Cicada strikes his strident drum. In many ravines, 
 they lead to the river, where one stands at a sufficient 
 elevation to have a full top view of the foliage, the per 
 fect blending of color the variety of form is marvelous. 
 The bright green leaves of the red oak, needle tipped ; 
 the leaves of the scarlet oak deep lobed, delicate, lust 
 rous ; the black oak s dark green, shining like new 
 leather underneath ; the laural oak s thick, shiny un- 
 lobed. And mingling with the oaks, hickory. The 
 broad leaves of the young hickory the small curled 
 leaves of the old the tri-form leaves of the sassafras 
 the four pointed leaves of the tulip-tree pea-green, 
 sparkling. 
 
 This sea of foliage touched by the wind dimples, 
 deepens, ripples shows gray bole here and violet deep 
 there with the lap of leaf on leaf as cool, as musical as 
 the incoming of a tranquil Summer tide. 
 
 Now and again some lordly son of Kish overtops the 
 rest a spire-lide crest and shakes his banner above 
 their heads : prince, sovereign. Such a one I know a 
 tulip-tree, that from the top of a high hill rises a hundred 
 and fifty feet green, lusty stooping a little towards the 
 north to meet the storms, as an athlete stoops braced, 
 with arms outstretched against the coming rush. For 
 miles this noble tree may be seen flower-crowned, or 
 lifting its torch-like seed bracts. A tree of God s own
 
 JULY 67 
 
 planting when the land was young : old, old, when you 
 walked here, Audubon. 
 
 My heart said many days ago : " The bluebirds are 
 gone." It was borrowing sorrow, for the bluebirds are 
 not gone, they are still " shifting their load of song " 
 along the fences. They show me the way this morning 
 and I care not where they lead. I can trust them 
 whithersoever they go. They are the best guides to old 
 pleasant fields and lanes, to the old orchards, the old 
 barns, the old-fashioned gardens. They know where 
 the altheas, the hollyhocks, the mock-oranges, the bridal 
 wreaths, the lilies-of-the-valley, the cockscombs, the lark 
 spurs, the salvias, the gilly flowers grow. The weather- 
 stained gate post with a hole in its top, they can tell me 
 of that, and of the spring beneath the trees, the " gum " 
 spring, deep, with the water bubbling up at its bottom 
 through clean white sand. Yes, they know it all, they 
 are the gentle keepers of many a treasure of memory, 
 worthless, may be, but to the heart and to them. God 
 keep them a haven. 
 
 The milkweed bolls are filling. Elderberries are ripe, 
 their deep garnet clusters contrasting beautifully with the
 
 68 JULY 
 
 neighboring green. Poke berries are turning from white 
 to green. 
 
 Low in the east a misty orange moon, 
 
 And in the west the last faint tinge of red, 
 
 Moonlight and twilight mingling overhead 
 
 In tender beauty that will fade too soon. 
 
 O God of Earth and Heaven grant me this boon 
 
 That often at this hour, when I am dead, 
 
 My spirit may return and, raptured, tread 
 
 This winding hill- path where the cedars croon ; 
 
 That I may feel, as I feel now, the spell, 
 
 The ecstacy, the longing and the thrill 
 
 Of mute companionship, with stream and dell, 
 
 And trees, and stars, and every heavenward hill: 
 
 And dream the dreams no mortal tongue can tell, 
 
 And speak Thy deeps that ever more are still. 
 
 The weeds by the road are covered with tiny white 
 butterflies. I have never seen them in so dainty a bloom 
 before. A little further on vervain offers beauty to the 
 passer-by, nor cares if he bestow but a passing glance. 
 The swallows are dimpling the waters of a wayside pond, 
 dimples that widen into silvery rings, that pass out of 
 sight in the rushes. The clouds are like white fingers 
 outspread upon the sky. Buffoon of the woods, the 
 yellow-breasted chat, is "showing off" to the wild sun 
 flowers and climbing false buckwheat under a clump of
 
 JULY 69 
 
 oaks. He barks like a puppy, gobbles like a diminutive 
 turkey, and tumbles through the air dangling his legs. 
 " Cluck ! Cluck /sic ! ittlc, title, ittle, ittle querk f" he 
 calls over and over again between tumbles. And then 
 he straightens up and looks as handsome and as little 
 given to buffoonery as one may be. Doubtless in nest 
 ing time, there is a method in his madness, but ordinarily 
 it is pure fun, a bubbling over of spirits. 
 
 I heard a scarlet tanager sing in the rain to-day. A 
 robin-like song, and I had the singer in plain view as he 
 sat on a fence rail above the road. His brilliant plu 
 mage, the dark sky, the dim green of twilight impressed 
 me as if I stood before some lovely light about to pass 
 away forever. His song was quiet as if in keeping with 
 the hour. " Goodnight ! Farewell ! " he seemed to 
 say, and often in dreams I have heard him since, " Good 
 night, farewell." 
 
 Thistle-down is beginning to fly, glinting above the 
 meadows, seeking a place for the great change. And, 
 floating like thistle-down, ballooning spiders trail their 
 gauzy webs.
 
 70 JULY 
 
 Here, not long ago, stood a majestic wood. Myriads 
 of lifted leaves protecting violets, sweet williams, lady 
 slippers, cardinal flowers. Often I have come here for 
 rest, for the calm of its secret green chambers, for the 
 welcome of its birds ; now what a change. All gone ! 
 A pitiable array of stumps, of flowers broken, trodden 
 under foot, dying. The woodland pond, once mirror of 
 loveliness, cracked by the sun and dry. Nor is it only the 
 utilitarian spirit but the wasteful that has been here. A 
 prodigal land, a prodigal people. The fire, the axe, be 
 cause there is enough and to spare. A sweeping des 
 truction ! God s trees cut down, and about the unshaded 
 roof-tree saplings planted without nurture, with no 
 thought of beauty. Yet Beauty will take thought of her 
 self. The best will be made of all that remains. Flowers 
 will grow again, lustier in the sun. Here will shine the 
 timothy, the pink and white clover, the lustrous corn. 
 The spirit of the trees will be here in blossoming 
 orchards, in waving grain. 
 
 The rippling low laughter of corn, beloved of the sun and the 
 
 showers ; 
 The silver-winged clouds that are borne to where the rose sunset 
 
 flowers ; 
 The beauty that lies on the wheat; the perfume the meadow 
 
 distils ; 
 A voice, unspeakably sweet, that calls from the far blue hills.
 
 JULY 71 
 
 The bells of the song-sparrows rung, the flutes of the meadow- 
 larks blown ; 
 
 Green walls of a brook overhung with elder, whose fragrance is 
 sown 
 
 Whose fragrance is sown on the breeze, to loiter and linger and 
 fail 
 
 In the depths of the billowy trees at the feet of the bitter-sweet 
 pale.
 
 AUGUST. 
 
 SINCE I was last in the fields July has passed away f 
 but here there seems no sorrow for the passing. The 
 indigo-bird is singing joyfully ; the road is bordered 
 with "life everlasting." 
 
 I called on my friends the bank swallows to-day and 
 found them at home in a sandy cliff overlooking the 
 river. Handsome, dapper fellows who will stay here 
 long enough to see the yellowing golden-rod and then 
 away South. 
 
 Quiet falls and Halcyon is here now a noisy fellow, 
 breaking silence with his loud rattle, sitting on a dead 
 limb at the edge of the ravine. I am very fond of this 
 bold, handsome fisher, verily a /C zV^fisher with his royal 
 crest and robes. And bearer, too, of real halcyon days, 
 when by a peace-loving stream I kept tryst with dreams 
 where life was a Summer cloud restful in the blue, and 
 trade a thing forgotten, unneeded, its curse removed. 
 Dear harvest-home days, when into the granary of my 
 soul was brought a harvest of beauty : when the sun, the 
 stars, the clouds, my harvesters, sang to me their harvest 
 song.
 
 AUGUST 73 
 
 From far away comes to me now the song of the 
 vireo dearest of woodland singers, who sings his 
 sweetest while the sunshine drips through the leaves 
 after a shower. Reed notes with that liquid quality im 
 possible to reproduce. No song is more artless. It 
 seems to bubble up from his throat apparently without 
 beginning or end. I have sat for an hour, at the foot of 
 a tall tree, in the freshness and quiet of the forest just to 
 watch his little body high in the branches above, to hear 
 his song dropping down to me like golden raindrops 
 breeze-shaken from dewy leaves. A true follower of 
 Pan is he a voice of the deep, green woods. 
 
 Yellow and white butterfles flit before me as I turn 
 from the river and take the winding road leading into the 
 hills. From a " heaven " tree overhead " Cuh cuh 
 cuh" calls the cuckoo the " raincrow " and I see his 
 long slate-colored body moving silently among the top 
 most branches. How like a spirit he comes and goes. 
 
 The way leads me around the hillside where water 
 tinkles down the rocks, and mingled with the sound, at 
 regular intervals, the monotonous cry of the wood 
 peewee. " Pee-we-e, pee-zvc-c" a plaintive call that 
 would weary one were it not for the wonderful music 
 with which Nature accompanies all her singers, bringing 
 out in each voice the perfect measure of its own beauty 
 so that at the end of the day the true listener feels that
 
 74 AUGUST 
 
 no singer could have been spared. Just now the pee- 
 wee s song is accompanied not only by the tinkling water 
 but by the whistling wings of a dove in its swift passage, 
 and by the liesurely flap flap of a flicker high in the 
 air. And withal the wind touches the leaves to whisper 
 ing harmony. 
 
 And as for color well there is redwing this moment 
 come over the hilltop with a song of the meadow. A 
 short song but never to me a harsh one. What a fine 
 fellow, to be sure, with his uniform on his glossy black, 
 his red epauletts. A color bearer of June at his best 
 when the timothy is in bloom and the first sheaves of 
 wheat are garnered : 
 
 When June, a wild rose in her hair, 
 Sows all sweet odors in the air. 
 
 About me, as I pause to watch the redwing, floats 
 a delicious perfume, wafted from the locusts on the 
 hill that are yet fragrant with the memory of a bloom 
 l n g gone. A cool, delicate scent very grateful. 
 It is a charming grove, the locusts fringed with 
 elms whose mid-summer tips appear, their tender green 
 contrasting exquisitely with the lustier green of older 
 foliage. 
 
 I pluck a handful of toad-flax and go up to the grove. 
 A wood-thrush waits me. How modest he is, yet how
 
 AUGUST 75 
 
 perfectly at ease as he eyes me pleasantly. A noted 
 singer without any airs. His singing time is now past ; 
 but on the slopes of Spring how few surpass him. 
 
 What charm there is in a winding road ! The road I 
 have come to-day winds with ever-increasing ascent 
 among the hills. And now that I have reached the sum 
 mit of a dividing ridge I can look back on a way of 
 peaceful beauty, along which yellow flags nod, and 
 brightening vervain. Far in the south are low, blue 
 hills. The sun has just set. In the east an indigo- 
 colored storm cloud with fringed edges overhangs the 
 flat woods. A long belt of cumulus of lighter blue binds 
 the horizon, and behind this belt, taller cumuli, rose- 
 bright. Above, through breaks in the wool-pack, 
 deeps of violet, touched with the pink of the afterglow. 
 All wonderfully rich in color. 
 
 Here at the edge of a little pond I notice one of those 
 charming bits of color one so often meets in the woods 
 and fields. A silver cluster of thistles against a back 
 ground of tall magenta ironweed, the picture reflected 
 faithfully in the clear waters. 
 
 In the treetops is the chick! chick! of blackbirds a 
 note of Spring. There is something refreshing and cheer 
 ing in this familiar call and the sudden flight of these
 
 76 AUGUST 
 
 birds from tall boughs. The world is made younger, 
 the buds stir in their long sleep if the blackbirds but go 
 trooping by in long-linked irridescence. Here in sober 
 August they have touched the chords of April. So 
 Nature would keep us in mind of her varied music, as 
 a friend brings out and sings to us a song we love but 
 had partly forgotten. 
 
 " Tap, tap, tap." Do you hear him? Can you find 
 him there among the leaves ? On some dead limb he is 
 playing his wholesome march, but we can only guess, as 
 we peer about, whether he wears red and black, or red, 
 white and black, or golden yellow, there behind his dense 
 screen. Nevertheless, we know him for a minstrel good 
 and true ; a stay-at-home through Winter months when 
 all other singers have fled away South. Joy be his lot! 
 
 The wind how his tapping marks its melody ! The 
 melody of the wind that fills the soul with inexpressible 
 longing; that year in, year out, has been breathed upon 
 the earth, now in dim aisles of beauty, now through the 
 glad arches of Summer ways and that shall continue 
 forever. 
 
 The tall lobelia is in bloom, a dainty bit of blue at the 
 edge of the ravine. 
 
 Back toward the hills a coffee-bean tree is set with fine 
 effect against a background of maples, its long branches of 
 compound leaves outlined in sap-green again.st catalpas
 
 AUGUST 77 
 
 and hackberries. It seems as if for a moment Nature 
 had given thought to a landscape gardener : yet only for 
 a moment. A greater artist than man is here. 
 
 Born acrobats, a couple of nut-hatches are running up 
 and down a large black walnut. Heads up or heads 
 down, or walking on the underside of a limb like flies it 
 is all one to them. "Hank, hank, qitank hank ! " they 
 call. Clowns of the green tent of the woods, life is not 
 a sad affair at all for them here, where the sun flashes 
 through the trees, here with the hum of the bees in v a 
 linden. 
 
 There is a lane I know I call it Song Lane because 
 my birds come there to feast on the wild cherries that 
 border it, to sing their sweetest songs. 
 
 There, on the top of a rail, the great flycatcher loves 
 to sit, his meditations interspersed with graceful springs 
 as he takes many a dainty bit from the air. I am 
 glad he ignores me to-day as I watch the little quail 
 running across the quiet road for cover in the high 
 goldenrod that is brightening in color for the Fall pageant. 
 
 The last of the season s blackberries a few sprays 
 hanging over the fence. The black-eyed susans are
 
 78 AUGUST 
 
 still clothed in gay orange and black. Bumblebees 
 cling to the blossoms of the false dragon head. 
 
 Among the bright wings of the roadside none are 
 brighter than those of the mailed dragon fly the 
 " snake doctor " of boyhood days who was always busy 
 visiting his ugly and venomous patients. What a libel 
 on such a handsome and harmless fellow ! Here he 
 darts close about me as if to assure me that he is really 
 a knight, good and valorous, ready to tilt down a sun 
 beam for the heart of a rose " There, admire me!" he 
 says, as he pauses for an instant on the tip of a weed. 
 
 The evening primrose gladdens the fence side. What 
 fragance what color. Not only at twilight but in the 
 cool dewy mornings it makes pleasant the way. 
 
 Fall creeping on. A rainy day with that indefinable 
 touch of sadness our hearts know so well. 
 
 The sun shines dimly to-day after the rain. Scarf 
 clouds are trailed across the sky. The foxtail grass is a 
 clear yellow. Fields of ragweed stretch away to fields 
 of tasseled corn. A solitary pecan tree rises dark 
 and prophet-like against the sky. 
 
 And now all the west is lit with a glorious cloud-
 
 AUGUST 79 
 
 scape. Deep violet, fiery orange, pale gold, malachite 
 green, blended and glowing above the bowed, the silent 
 earth. 
 
 This morning, as I go afield, among the first to greet 
 me is my dear little friend, the goldfinch, singing as he 
 comes his undulating way that cheery song of his which 
 surely must make hearts happier. To see him, in his 
 golden coat, on a thistle top, is worth going miles, and 
 to lie in the meadow when he flies over is one of the 
 most precious of all dream times. 
 
 The goldenrods are taking on more color. Here is 
 one above the creek very yellow, and as bright in the 
 water beneath it, that is set round with fringing willows 
 and wild sweet potato vines. 
 
 Near this place is a decaying walnut whose trunk is 
 covered by a Virginia creeper in very charming fashion, 
 illustrating a lusty, a tender trait of Nature. For if 
 vines in wantonness pull down the strong they oftener 
 clothe the naked and the dying in garments of living 
 beauty. 
 
 By that vagary of fancy which controls oftentimes one s 
 feet and leads them where it will, I am led along a road,
 
 8o AUGUST 
 
 this afternoon, that is bordered on one side with trees 
 and on the other by low-lying tobacco fields over which 
 waves of heat shimmer. There are lilac shadows in the 
 coves and vistas of the distant wood, but at my feet on 
 the green grass the shadow color is lost. I hear the 
 wood pewee again. There are Fall leaves on the black 
 gums and sassafras. The tobacco fields are blue-green. 
 The clouds, with their bases lost in mist, gleam like 
 sunlit snow. In the quiet I can hear the sigh of a fall 
 ing leaf, a passing unit in the great sum of beauty. A 
 warbler sings somewhere in the woods beyond. I follow 
 but he eludes me, yet in following I have found full 
 flowered clumps of Joe Pye weed. 
 
 Skullcaps bloom at the wood s edge. The sumac 
 balls are reddish lavender. Wood smoke drifts across 
 fallow lands in long scarfs of bluish-gray. The old 
 charm of the pastoral life is come again. How good is 
 the smell of the smoke ! 
 
 The sun sets red above it a gleaming thread of red 
 gold. 
 
 Night. Starlight and the dusky trees and the song of 
 the white crickets. There are two distinct choruses
 
 AUGUST 81 
 
 answering one another with katydids and brown crickets 
 chiming in at regular intervals. In the darkness here, 
 the weeds and grasses are alive with song. There, 
 above, silence a great violet space through which the 
 stars shine. 
 
 Boneset whitens. About me the jays chatter shrilly, 
 now and again uttering their peculiar musical notes 
 their love notes it would seem, as grateful to the ear as 
 their plumage is to the eye. Where the soil is thinnest 
 there are many color hints of Fall a red leaf on the 
 maple, a golden on the walnut. The days are brooding 
 on the change. 
 
 I am in Song Lane again. The birds are thick in the 
 wild cherry trees, but the sun puts an aura about my 
 glasses, and my songsters are all clothed in rainbow 
 colors, so that I cannot see them in their own plumage 
 as I would like. On one side a tall untrimmed osage 
 hedge makes an ideal place for the birds to nest and 
 roost. Here under the shade of overhanging boughs 
 one may watch, if very quiet, the home manners of 
 many a shy fellow, and hear a number of love secrets. 
 
 Mullein and pennyroyal encroach on the beaten ways. 
 The boneset is in full blossom, calling with wholesome
 
 32 AUGUST 
 
 fragrance for the bees. Boneset loves the fence corners 
 
 o 
 
 and the edge of wet woods the wet woods where sweet- 
 gums grow, shooting up straight and slender, graceful 
 boles, columns of stately beauty in God s temple. And 
 beautifully the sun strikes through these temples, lighting 
 a column here and there, touching the leafy arches with 
 changeful color. 
 
 The glory of the morning ! The black gum, herald 
 of Fall, flashes through the green. In the east the blue 
 is flecked with luminous white clouds that are doubtless 
 the cool tents of the spirits of Dawn. 
 
 It is a time of bubbling over of song. Even the wood 
 pewee almost ceases to drawl : is quickened into rapture 
 among the goldening boughs. 
 
 I heard this afternoon the long-billed marsh wren, in 
 a little brake of green where I sat listening to chewink, 
 the level sunbeams glistening on his coat. But the song 
 I shall never forget that I never heard before was the 
 song of the Carolina wren. Through a fringe of sprouts 
 he looked out at me I could have touched him with 
 my hand and then he rang his tiny bell, so silvery, so 
 true a call to the fairies, a cadenza of dewdrops for the 
 heart of Silence.
 
 SEPTEMBER. 
 
 Gray trees, that love the folded hills, 
 
 For whom the seasons hold 
 The tender green, the lusty green, 
 
 The varying red and gold 
 To whom the stars are friends, and rills, 
 
 And voices of the night, 
 Who raptured see Dawn s mystery 
 
 And miracle of light : 
 
 O hear me as I come to you 
 
 From yonder toil and smoke, 
 And make me free as you are free 
 
 Who wear no badge nor yoke 
 Who to the soul of Beauty true 
 
 Wait for the touch of Fall ; 
 The chill, the haze, the leafless days 
 
 The hand that quiets all. 
 
 The moss is green about your feet, 
 With beauty you are crowned ; 
 
 The sunlight weaves thro falling leaves 
 A glory all around: 
 
 The paths that lead to you are sweet 
 With wholesome scents and wild, 
 
 make me free as you are free, 
 As strong, as linden led. 
 
 1 stand beside you, far above 
 The white clouds loiter slow 
 
 Your branches lie against the sky 
 
 In netted gray and glow ; 
 Your long, still shadows eastward move, 
 
 With mist each hollow fills, 
 A vesper calls, and twilight falls 
 
 Upon the folded hills.
 
 84 SEPTEMBER 
 
 The stars come out, I see them gleam 
 
 Far in the purple deep; 
 Your flocks are they who gently stray 
 
 Thro pleasant vales of sleep, 
 While you keep watch with many a dream, 
 
 O good gray shepherd trees, 
 All silence clad and seeming sad 
 
 With sacred memories. 
 
 NATURE takes no notice of the marks on our candles, 
 the shadows on our dials, the hands on our clocks. 
 We may say here August ends and September begins, but 
 Nature, like a master colorist, so blends them that there 
 is no sharp line of distinction. The warm tones of Fall 
 follow the cool tones of Summer as harmoniously as tints 
 are blended in the evening or the morning skies. Na 
 ture is not at all concerned about our yesterdays or to 
 morrows. She knows only one eternal Present. 
 
 The hedges are gay with beggar ticks, pink knotweed, 
 azuratum. The sky is cloudless, the wind comes with 
 that strange yet winning message from a far-away land. 
 The tap, tap, tap of a woodpecker is heard. The" red 
 head " of the clearing. What bird is more constant 
 than he ? Which one of them all has a better, a truer 
 message ? No matter if skies be dark or bright he has 
 a cheery word, he beats a tonic drum. Though all 
 should go, he stays, he changes not. Type of good 
 homely things, of plain living, of daily hope and joy.
 
 SEPTEMBER 85 
 
 Goldenrod, elder loaded with berries, and garget cover 
 the woods and fields. How tall the weeds are grown, 
 each with its harvest of seed. Over the fences and bushes 
 the clematis, " old man s beard," is flowing in silver floss. 
 The yellow bellied fly catcher is taking a meal under a 
 dense shade of gum and oak, darting down and return 
 ing to his bough with a flutter. Close by is a deserted 
 plant bed thick with pink-and-white blossoms of tobacco. 
 A beautiful growth is the climbing false buckwheat that 
 grows in great profusion here, blending its dainty green 
 with the garnet of the pokeberry. 
 
 The tobacco fields are bordered with sneeze weed and 
 marigold. This way leads me to the great " flat " woods, 
 the home of the cardinal flower, where in dim aisles the 
 underbrush is a tangled mass of spicewood and hazel cut 
 by narrow slashes of marsh grass. 
 
 The elms and shell-bark hickories here are magnificent. 
 Century giants hale as October. 
 
 Coming along the lane leading from the flat woods, 
 my eye caught instantly the vivid blue of the shadows 
 on a weather beaten board fence, I had never seen 
 shadows so blue before. The declining sun hung low over 
 a bordering hill and atmospheric conditions were just at 
 their best for a perfect exhibition of complementary 
 liSfht.
 
 86 SEPTEMBER 
 
 There is no color but the pure gold of sunset this after 
 noon. No clouds, and in the east near the horizon deep 
 lilac, and above, parallel bars of pink blend with the pale 
 lilac of the upper sky. A great calm has fallen on the 
 fields. 
 
 All along the way the golden-green tobacco is being 
 housed, the winding tracks of the busy wagons glisten 
 ing gossamers of toil. Chewink is still here with his 
 song of high places. The spice wood has put on its red 
 berries. 
 
 I never know half of the beauty of a tree until I lie 
 beneath it. 
 
 A quiet September day the fields linked in a chain of 
 golden gossamers. The Summer birds are departing. 
 Here in the woods I hear only the woodpecker and the 
 flicker. 
 
 What a change in two weeks ! Then but a few clumps 
 of golden rod were yellow, and the evening primrose was 
 in full bloom with wild morning glories clambering over 
 it, now the primroses are almost gone, the creek 
 banks are starred with marigolds. The clover blossoms 
 are faded, but in their stead has come a new beauty a
 
 SEPTEMBER 87 
 
 beauty of reddening sumac leaves. The milk weed bolls 
 are opening, loosing their argosies of silver. 
 
 Insects furnish the music now with only an occasional 
 bird note. 
 
 The moon is near its full and a short while before sun 
 down hangs white over the woods. One of the loveliest 
 of all Nature s hours is this of mingled sunlight and 
 moonlight. When the west is faint rose, and the east is 
 clear lilac, when the two lights meet and blend in the 
 upper sky. 
 
 Wild sunflowers still shine like golden stars in the 
 damp woods. Late as it is bumble bees fly past laden 
 with pollen. 
 
 Nature gives new beauty day by day on through the 
 round of years. Endless variety, no two stars, no two 
 sunsets alike. This evening there is a pale-blue sky 
 with light golden clouds shading upward into purple, 
 and downward into flame color at the horizon. Color 
 after color taking on new shades, changing so rapidly 
 that the eye scarce delights in one ere another is there, 
 passing from warm and vivid light into calm violet and 
 at last, with one white star, into the full glory of night. 
 And as the light fades, the river shines tranquilly through 
 the trees a mirror of silver.
 
 88 SEPTEMBER 
 
 To-day I have taken to the river. The reflections 
 how beautiful ! Deep waving green in the still water, 
 with the sun low in the west. The water falling white 
 from the wheel of a passing steamer is changed to lilac. 
 The waves roll in as if they were oiled, each wave pre 
 senting a facet of golden light and shadow. A long 
 smokestack in reflection seems broken into a hundred 
 pieces, and the sun, smiting a window-pane on the eastern 
 shore, falls, a spiral of gold, in the wrinkled water. 
 
 On one side of a little island, where the water is still 
 and the willows thick, two cranes watch noiselessly. 
 
 As the sun sinks lower the waves take on a deeper 
 purple that is broken, on the beach, into clear green 
 fringed with white. Fantastic scarf clouds wave over 
 the sun. And now the afterglow sky and river flooded 
 with intense carmine. 
 
 Dear trees, this voice that speaks to you and me 
 While all about us lies the mist of Fall, 
 
 Shall not we sometime know its mystery 
 The meaning of its call ? 
 
 Perhaps, even now, you in your robes so bright. 
 
 You lifted up and looking far away 
 May see the glow of some diviner light 
 
 Crowning the coming day. 
 
 List, hear you not ? The milkweed down is blown 
 As by a Spirit s breath what draws so near 
 
 That on my soul its shadow now is thrown 
 A rapture and a fear ?
 
 SEPTEMBER 89 
 
 Who will say when all the birds are flown South ? 
 Yesterday when the sky was gray I thought they were 
 gone ; but to-day the primrose is in bloom, the robin is 
 still here. In these periodical flittings there are always 
 loiterers who are loth to leave even when there comes 
 a touch of frost, and the scarlet and gold of Fall takes 
 the place of Summer s green. Blessed be these loiterers, 
 and sad is the day when they, too, leave and the woods 
 are still.
 
 OCTOBER. 
 
 Now on the tepees of the corn the smoke 
 
 Lies lilac-blue a veil of tender haze 
 Softening the landscape of these mellow days 
 
 Of yellowing poplar and of reddening oak. 
 Thus came the season the Great Spirit woke 
 
 From dreams untroubled and behold the maize 
 Was heaped within his lodge, his people s praise, 
 
 And full of love He unto them thus spoke : 
 In every year forever there shall be 
 
 What time the nuts fall and the oak is red 
 A season dreamy holy unto me, 
 
 In which the sweet smoke of my peace-pipe shed 
 Upon the earth shall hallow it, and give 
 
 Peace, joy, and plenty that the world may live." 
 
 AGIC colors are in the woods. Some of the oaks 
 are a rich glossy green, others red and scarlet. 
 The leaves of the gum are a light clear red mingled with 
 tints of yellow. I hear the hoot of a horned owl in the 
 distance a lonely call that the negroes interpret aptly 
 " Chick-er-a goose goose goose / " 
 
 The hedges are full of sparrows, that go in flocks 
 now vesper, fox, black-faced, white headed and with 
 them, leading the way, a cardinal. 
 
 The corn is in shock row after row of wigwams 
 where the warriors of Summer rest their shining harness 
 
 M
 
 OCTOBER 9 i 
 
 put off forever. The sky is a dark blue-gray, and 
 the only wings I can see high against it are those of the 
 sparrow-hawk graceful and swift whose shadow is as 
 the shadow of death to all the little earth-loving birds 
 now hidden in thickets and tall weeds. 
 
 The ragweeds are a cold purple, thick on the stubble 
 fields, and of such even height that the hills covered with 
 them appear, at a little distance, as if fallowed and har 
 rowed. In the hollows and around the edges of the 
 fields glow charming bits of color. The maroon of the 
 young sweetgums the scarlet of young sassafras. Color 
 that handled by man might look harsh or garish, seen 
 through this hazy atmosphere is wonderfully soft, yet 
 brilliant. 
 
 The acorns begin to fall, pattering in quick showers 
 when the wind comes by. The air has a frosty taste. 
 There are many red and yellow leaves, and gossamers 
 twinkle with a new light. The eddying leaves settle in 
 snug little hollows, or heap themselves in brier thickets, 
 as if forewarned of bitter days to come. Life everlasting 
 sparkles in pure fragrance on the hillside. 
 
 Life Everlasting ! All along the way we look for it, 
 led on by its strange, imperishable perfume ; some day 
 shall we not find it on God s hills ?
 
 92 OCTOBER 
 
 Flocks of blackbirds are flying west beneath a cold, 
 cloudy sky. This evening I noticed a very remarkable 
 display of sunset colors. Above me were dull gray 
 clouds. Then suddenly, two maples, not over fifty feet 
 away were lighted in their tops with a clear, bright 
 orange, as if the upper boughs of the trees were in lull 
 Fall dress. Some tall oaks were also brightened in the 
 same manner, but not so beautifully as the maples. Far 
 off a clump of trees, through a vista of red maples, was 
 aflame with this unusual light. The sun could not 
 be seen, but as the light in the trees faded, overhead 
 shone pink and violet bars bending to the horizon. 
 
 The wind is from frostland, but I hear a robin piping 
 a rather feeble strain. Song Lane holds now but a 
 serene memory of those who sang there. 
 
 About a mile beyond Song Lane there is a knoll that 
 overlooks the surrounding country; where the ground 
 falls gently away in fallow land and meadow. It is a 
 place I love, a breezy haunt of birds. Wild cherry trees 
 crown it, but now the leaves have drifted from them as 
 if following the birds, and my heart follows too. 
 
 How lovely are the shadows slipping eastward over 
 the fallow ground ! Noiseless couriers that go before the 
 stars and the dawn now clad in purple, now in yellow,
 
 OCTOBER 93 
 
 now in green as they cross the fields of ragweed and 
 of new- sown wheat. 
 
 And from this place how the wide horizon opens new 
 scenes vaster distances that make for enchantment. 
 Here at dusk come the vesper sparrow to send out over 
 the fields a hymn of thankfulness, an angelus of peace. 
 Here often my heart has been lifted up by visions of the 
 borderland the meeting of earth and sky by a voice : 
 " Enter into rest." 
 
 Chewink sang again this afternoon, and I should love 
 him the more because he stays so long with me and 
 comes again so early in the Spring. 
 
 O great flower of light ! The meanest weed that 
 grows seems now to share in the splendor of the sun. 
 Gossamers bear his golden words far across the hills. 
 
 Dusk has fallen, and the oaks have clothed them 
 selves in mystery. A bat weaves strange circles about 
 them. 
 
 This afternoon was surpassingly beautiful. There were 
 no clouds, but after the sun had fallen, bright orange light 
 filled the west brightest near the horizon and shading
 
 94 OCTOBER 
 
 up into pale blue, through which shone a star of the first 
 magnitude shaking with crystal light. The orange grad 
 ually gave place to red that blended into violet the star 
 gaining in brilliancy and deepening in color, and the blue- 
 gray river mirroring and softening all. 
 
 The ring of the axe ! How fast the woods are being 
 burned and cut away ! Slaughter without mercy, as 
 strong men slay weaker men somewhat because they 
 must, largely because they can. The flowers spring up 
 at the appointed season, the birds return, but a noble 
 tree once gone comes no more. The birds return ? No, 
 soon the warblers will not return, for their woodland 
 homes shall have been destroyed. Here the lanes, even, 
 in many places have been stripped of their trees that a 
 few more rows of tobacco and corn may grow. 
 
 But there is a wood I know that so far has escaped 
 this vandalism, a wood almost untouched by the hand 
 of man, where wild things grow in thick underbrush, 
 hazel, wild spice, wahoo, pawpaw, bitter-sweet, button- 
 bush, sumac, and countless more of Nature s untutored 
 children. 
 
 Thither my feet tend to-day, a calm, sparkling day 
 after a week of rain. There was a heavy frost this 
 morning. The air is full of its delicious flavor, mingled
 
 OCTOBER 95 
 
 with a whiff of cedar as I pass a grove on the way. The 
 woodpeckers chatter incessantly, flying along the fence, 
 tapping their welcome. The tall grass, russet green, is 
 clothed in frost crystals. The dogwoods are loaded with 
 scarlet berries. The swamp holly lights the way with 
 many a ruddy torch. The sky is blue and lavender. 
 The poison ivy flames in the trees russet-red and scarlet. 
 The paths are overhung with boneset and pokeweed. 
 All little shrubs stand out glowing in color, challenging 
 attention. One tulip tree that I admire particularly is a 
 rich yellow-green threaded with deep wine-red that I at 
 first thought was one of Nature s color whims in which 
 she sometimes stains a leaf yellow, and a sister leaf on 
 the same bough red, but on looking closer I found that 
 the wine-red came from a spray of poison ivy that had 
 won its way to the very top of the tree and thence leaped 
 out like a tongue of flame. The wild grape also is 
 especially brilliant in color. A fine clear red that the 
 sun makes almost luminous. 
 
 Ah, to spend such a day in the woods. A do-nothing 
 day under the trees, with a canopy of shifting light and 
 color, a bed of fragrant leaves. To watch the jay, the 
 cardinal, the red-headed woodpecker, the flicker such 
 constant and cheery friends who weave their joy fulness 
 into the woods, and fill it with delightful music. And 
 the taste of a sassafrass twig, how sweet ! The tinkle of
 
 96 OCTOBER 
 
 a half-hid stream, what melody ! My soul, as I sit here, 
 keeps repeating Stevenson s lines 
 
 " Here let me lie, 
 Under the wide and starry sky." 
 
 The wideness of it ! The glory of it ! The thrill of 
 it ! The longing, the longing ! 
 
 I have walked in the great hills to-day and found 
 them clothed in shining red and orange. The little 
 clumps of sassafras were dripping color; splashes of it 
 on the fields of ragweed, along the fence rows, in the 
 tobacco fields. 
 
 Wintry looking. Clouds with deep streaks of orange 
 in the west. The willows are almost bare of leaves. 
 Flocks of doves whistle swiftly by, going to roost. 
 Ghosts of goldenrod haunt the creek. A lonely tree 
 waits by the road. What are its thoughts on the marge 
 of the wide, deep night. 
 
 A windy day, the sky covered with clouds that drift 
 ceaselessly, the prevailing color tones gray and violet. 
 The wind roars through the oaks, hickories, maples, ash.
 
 OCTOBER 97 
 
 I see the tops of tall oaks rocking in the blast while the 
 roaring draws nearer and nearer until the trees close at 
 hand take it up and send down whirling showers of 
 leaves. The hickories are a fine old gold. In the flats 
 that lie across the meadow there are rich notes of red 
 and saffron in the sweetgums. A leaf dances before the 
 wind like another dazzling Herodias. Bars of light fall 
 obliquely through the clouds and spread fan-like over 
 the fields. What pictures they suggest of the far east, 
 these " Wings of the Morning ! " 
 
 As I come up the road there is a sudden burst of 
 sunshine from the western sky and the clouds in the 
 north, seen through a depression in the road, change into 
 beautiful indigo-blue. The wind blows chilly, but in the 
 treetops sporting with the wind is a flock of black birds. 
 How pleasant in their chatter ! How like pan pipes 
 their liquid notes. A major of Spring running 
 through the minor of the passing year. The pond is 
 rumpled gray. The winged elm is dashed with gold. The 
 broomsedge makes patches of brownish-yellow on the 
 hillside. 
 
 Led by a choir of blackbirds, neath a sky 
 Of rose and violet, October goes.
 
 NOVEMBER. 
 
 "Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. God 
 will see that you do not want society." 
 
 AIN and drifting leaves. Leaves that dance in 
 rows that lie limp and still. 
 
 R 
 
 Exquisite colors may often be seen, on a crisp morn 
 ing, in the steam, as it rises spreading like a geyser : 
 pinkish-purple and lavender. The ever changing curling 
 column suggests the very spirit of liberty, of beauty. 
 Expanding, drifting away under a pale blue sky of serene 
 loveliness. 
 
 How fresh, how genuine are the Fall grasses how 
 grateful after an artificially heated room or the perfume 
 of a hot house flower. 
 
 What is more charming than a walk, down a winding 
 way, in the Fall ? Through the wood that is so un 
 mindful of the garrulous world. Through the rustling 
 leaves every turn revealing new color, new vistas under
 
 NOVEMBER 99 
 
 the uplifted boughs. One such day I shall never forget. 
 The sky was crowded with shining hosts golden wing 
 on golden wing a multitude no man could number. 
 The forest was rapt expectant as if God were near. 
 It seemed to me as if all heaven and earth were chanting 
 low, reverently : " Holy Holy Holy ! " 
 
 A gray day with rain. The last aster the last even 
 ing primrose the last bird note whispers the wind. 
 
 The tide has turned back. Swarms of gnats hang 
 over the road. Wild beans peep at me through the 
 fence ; they have kept a blossom. Primroses, too, mock 
 me the frost has not driven them all away. 
 
 The river is low. Cicada, the last of his tribe, beats 
 a stridulous drum. Across the still river lies the sun s 
 fiery splendor. A skiff rowed slowly up stream leaves a 
 narrow, silver wake. As the sun nears the horizon 
 purple tints appear in the water ; the path of the sun 
 deepens in color, grows broader. The mist rises in the 
 far corn fields and spreads like a great lake half seen 
 through broken woodlands. The sun is dimmed by an 
 almost imperceptible haze. Crossing the path of the sun 
 obliquely a boat changes the still brightness into rippling 
 gold. The purple deepens with one delicate streak of green 
 ish tint running out from the shore half way across the 
 
 7
 
 ioo NOVEMBER 
 
 stream. Below the sun there is reddish purple. Clouds ap 
 pear above, golden, as if illumined from within, stretching 
 level across the horizon. The purple fades, the silvery 
 streaks have almost disappeared. The lower disc of the sun 
 is darkened and two bands of dark cloud almost meet above 
 it. The overlying clouds grow lighter, the sky above is 
 pale blue. Wind ripples appear on the water and with 
 the ripples the greenish streaks circling and broadening. 
 The sun sinks beamless, red. A leafless sycamore is 
 outlined white against the sky. Slowly, slowly, the sun 
 sinks, suffusing the horizon above it with carmine. The 
 clouds catch the afterglow. The moon rises above the 
 trees gathering light. 
 
 The primroses are still laughing at me from sheltered 
 places. I have noticed that on cool dewy mornings 
 the primroses are just as beautiful as at nightfall, and 
 that their blossoms open to the moth of day as well as 
 to the moth of night. Their flowers are even fresher and 
 more fragrant in the morning, and they often continue 
 open until mid-day. 
 
 Dusk-clothed the day went softly by 
 I heard the cedar s whispering croon, 
 
 And I saw, at the rim of a rose-lit sky, 
 The yellow blossom of the moon.
 
 NOVEMBER 101 
 
 Coming into the field this morning I surprised a hawk 
 at his breakfast. He flew like a flash over the woods 
 and dropped out of sight. Lightness, grace, strength ! 
 A much slandered fellow, too, by all who love to be 
 killing. 
 
 The tobacco is housed, and I sit on the deserted skids 
 where it was hung for a while to yellow. The crickets 
 chirp incessantly. A crow flies far overhead cawing. 
 The corn that is left standing is all in ragged regimentals. 
 The sumacs are still a blaze of color scarlet, garnet, 
 crimson. Before the nearing brier-hook they say : " We 
 who are about to die salute you ! " 
 
 Late this afternoon I heard a screech-owl. As Thoreau 
 says, he was wailing, " Oh, that I had never been born ! " 
 " Oh, that 1 had never been born! " 
 
 How still the woods are mute beneath the hand of 
 Fall. Are they not listening to the spirit voice of the 
 lark from the far fields ? 
 
 The smell of the rotting leaves. How small seem the 
 sermons of men in this thought of a day that is dead.
 
 102 NOVEMBER 
 
 About five o clock this afternoon, as I went afield after 
 a day spent with the master melodists of the mind 
 Tennyson, Emerson, Lanier I heard the song-sparrow. 
 He, too, is a master melodist. A lyrist of dewy, of sun- 
 parched, of November fields. And at sunset I heard 
 his companion, the vesper-sparrow a gentler poet whom 
 Christ would have loved had He walked through this 
 twilight land. Ah, that far away time or is it ? is He 
 " nearer than I think ? " 
 
 These rainy days of November, when the rain is like 
 a mist watering the face of the earth, when the bowed 
 and broken weeds wait like mourners for one who loves 
 them to speak a word of cheer, of hope, to lay his hands 
 upon their heads, to meditate in sympathy with them on 
 the change that has come, the death of the flowers, the 
 departure of the birds, the waning of the strength of the 
 sun ; these rainy days, are they not the fallow days of 
 the heart when much seed is sown, for an awakening by 
 and by ? Do we not sit at the feet of many a Master we 
 had long neglected, and think on things it is not well to 
 forget? Perchance we may learn better how to "sell 
 our clothes and keep our thoughts." Perhaps we shall 
 drink deeper of the well of Kindliness ; know more of 
 the voices and of the silence. Or going afield it may be
 
 NOVEMBER 103 
 
 we shall see that the " dull, dreary days " are not so 
 dreary after all. That Beauty loves a gray day. That 
 joy is immortal, and learn of Him who loves the sparrows 
 that are sold for a farthing;. 
 
 The bright colors have passed from wood and field, 
 the sky-line of the forest is now no longer rounded into 
 domes, but is broken into spires here and there, into bare 
 limbs tossed aloft, into a fringe of slender boughs and 
 interlacing twigs. 
 
 The landscapes are hazier in the distance, but closer, 
 form is dominant over grays and browns. 
 
 The crows in long, dark chains swing over the field. 
 Near nightfall I have seen hundreds of them flying 
 toward the hills above the river where for years they 
 have roosted. Out of the haze they come as if by 
 magic troubling the quiet with their cawing. 
 
 Sometime ago the weedy strings on which the grass 
 hoppers and white crickets play were broken and their 
 music ceased but not so with the brown cricket. He 
 is a musician of Winter bringing in, if we invite him, the 
 q;ood cheer of out-of-doors to the hearth stone, the 
 
 o
 
 104 NOVEMBER 
 
 cheerup of a life that is not daunted by simple living. 
 Give him a wood fire, he likes the smell of oak and 
 hickory and he will tell how the woods whisper at 
 night how the stars talk to one another how the birds 
 plant and gather in their harvest, and how not to 
 trouble oneself much about new things, " whether of 
 clothes or friends." 
 
 The cattle wait at the gate. The world is red with 
 the camp fires of the army of the sun. 
 
 How may I know a tree ? As I would know a true 
 friend, by communion heart to heart. How may I know 
 its message ? By lying at its feet. 
 
 Gray trees that love the twilight land, 
 
 Of night so unafraid 
 
 What rest shall be, what peace for me 
 
 The night when I am dead? 
 
 So calm, so prohet-like you stand 
 
 Here while the glory pales 
 
 What lies before what brighter shore 
 
 When this good sunlight fails ? 
 
 The clouds like crimson torches burn 
 High in the eastern blue 
 The afterglow that passes slow 
 In many a radiant hue. 
 And unto it my soul doth turn, 
 Doth fearless voyage on 
 This holy light above the night 
 Shall pledge me of the dawn.
 
 DECEMBER. 
 
 THE first snowfall. It has been so long since the 
 little flakes visited the earth they are doubtful of a 
 welcome even by the sparrows who sit on the fence with 
 heads cocked to one side in a very knowing way. One 
 two three what are you waiting for, nestlings ? Tis a 
 long, long time you were away, and the bosom of our 
 mother yearns for you. Faster, faster! now you come 
 merrily. The sparrows are glad after all and so am I, 
 though none of us are as glad as the Great Mother. 
 She has much to tell you, as you lie close to her heart, 
 secrets for you and her only, secrets as deep as life and 
 death. Of how you may make the wheat grow and fill 
 the great cisterns in the silent places. 
 
 The ragweed fields are changing from dull purple to 
 white as they catch the feathers of the snow. A broom- 
 grass clump near at hand is like the plume of Navarre. 
 The cornfields are tawny and dun. The woods look 
 almost black against the horizon. 
 
 I stand on a high hill and watch the snowfall. I can 
 see over an area of seven or eight miles, and I never 
 looked on a quieter scene. The farm houses are white ;
 
 io6 DECEMBER 
 
 the curling smoke only, telling of life within. The corn 
 shocks are like the deserted tents of a great army. 
 
 In so holy an hour who can measure the ebb and flow 
 of thought, of emotions, in the soul as it stands in the 
 presence chamber of Nature and waits on the footfall of 
 the Great Power. Not in the sensuousness of Summer, 
 not in the pageantry of Fall, not in the passion of Spring, 
 shall one see as in the stillness of the white earth the 
 Spirit that moves in all. Here are met Life and Death 
 the light and the shadow marvelous two who wait 
 upon the Unseen. Here the Voice is clearer, the Silence 
 deeper. And what we know and what we know not are 
 blended softly into We wait. But I hear at my feet the 
 sigh of a dropping flake. 
 
 Leaving the hilltops I am come into a deep, cozy hol 
 low where the accumulated leaves of all the foregoing 
 years are gathered, and where the moss is thick on the 
 roots of oaks and elms. In such a place, with the 
 thought of all gathered here, the innumerable dead, one 
 might wish to fall asleep as have fallen the leaves. 
 
 Peace reigns here. A gray squirrel sits motionless 
 watching me. Why should he be afraid ? Seen through 
 the branches he was but a part of the gray lichens that 
 cover the tree trunk. Certainly he has a lovely home ! 
 May only friends go that way. 
 
 The meadowlark is with me, his breast brighter for
 
 DECEMBER 107 
 
 the snow, his song dearer because he knows the border 
 land and the dreams that come there. 
 
 The snow has passed. It is mild and Spring-like, 
 with the cardinal singing. How he lures me with his 
 song to follow through the thickets, to lean on Quiet 
 that he may come near. 
 
 The fields are smoky. All around the horizon lie 
 heavy clouds. The sun sets red through the oak wood ; 
 countless twigs are traced against the sky; some fine and 
 lace-like, others feathery. One of the greatest beauties 
 of Winter is this twig tracery at dawn or at sunset. We 
 know but part of the beauty of a tree until we see it 
 unclothed. 
 
 And there is something strangely soothing in the 
 voices of the trees heard on a Winter s day in the midst 
 of a deep wood. How poor seem the words of men 
 when these century sages speak. What wisdom they 
 teach of simple living, of simple faith. But they are 
 silent for all who cannot understand. 
 
 Sunshiny, with the woodpeckers calling who that 
 loves them can stay in-doors. Over the hill they call to
 
 io8 DECEMBER 
 
 where the leaves are crisp in the hollows, to where the 
 purple berries of the greenbrier hang in clusters and the 
 air is sweet as old wine. 
 
 I thought as I looked on the winding creek, 
 Clear amber rippling on thro snow, 
 
 Here is the beauty my soul doth seek 
 This is the grace my heart would know. 
 
 This is the writing forever new ; 
 
 God is here in this happy stream ; 
 God is here, as there in the blue 
 
 Here He tells of a lovely dream. 
 
 There is a hill, up which the road winds in gradual 
 ascent, that overlooks a great expanse of flat country 
 where all through the Winter the cornstalks stand flut 
 tering their faded finery in the wind. Far away is the 
 river, steel-blue through the leafless trees. Patches of 
 Winter wheat pencilled green, patches of broom- grass 
 brownish-yellow, dash the scene with color. One even 
 ing, near nightfall, I sat there and saw the mists rising to 
 meet the darkness. First a slender white arm up-raised 
 encircling the wood on the western horizon ; then, one by 
 one, gray tentacles thrust up while the dusk pressed them 
 down ; then a weight of darkness that seemed to fall 
 suddenly : chill, silence, a star.
 
 DECEMBER 109 
 
 The rabbit-hawk, as he is called here, may often be 
 seen in these December days, circling in broad spirals or 
 hovering over some brier or broom-grass patch. His 
 wings have almost the reach of an eagle s : he is the 
 very embodiment of grace and strength : fierce-eyed as 
 a buccaneer. But I have seen him with the crows 
 on his back in most ignominious flight, dodging this 
 way and that, while his pursuers kept up a great racket, 
 calling their fellows to the chase. Once I remember to 
 have seen him in a fence corner with several crows about 
 him. He had backed up against the rails and they were 
 having a rough-and-tumble fight when the breaking of a 
 twig under my foot startled them and sent them swiftly 
 away. The hawk was doubtless glad of the interruption, 
 but the crows were evidently brave in numbers and were 
 making the feathers fly. 
 
 I have seen this hawk, too, driven off the field by king 
 birdsa pair swooping down and striking him repeatedly 
 until he found shelter in the woods. 
 
 To-day I have seen the woods from my window 
 through a blur of rain. I have taken down my Aud- 
 ubon, I have been thinking of his life here. Of the mill 
 whose foundation timbers partly remain, of the bitter 
 grind it was to him whose free spirit could not be 
 
 &
 
 i io DECEMBER 
 
 confined long within walls, of his struggle here in the 
 face of bitter poverty and misunderstanding. What he 
 accomplished is a continual marvel. How delightful is 
 his enthusiasm over his drawing of the Kingfisher, his 
 first real drawing from Nature. " When I saw the liv 
 ing birds," he says, " I felt the blood rush to my tem 
 ples, and almost in despair spent about a month without 
 drawing." 
 
 The old men who remember him, as he was in Hen 
 derson, are all gone. He was to them a kindly enigma. 
 He could not make money, he was a non-conformist. 
 He had a passion for the woods and fields, not as a 
 hunter, they could understand a hunter ; but as an inter 
 preter, an artist, a poet, that they could neither under 
 stand, nor, if it took him much from home, forgive. He 
 is yet but a name to hundreds here, but the heart that 
 understands, and the trees, and the hills, will never 
 forget. 
 
 O holy hour, nor day, nor yet the night, 
 But beauty of their meeting past all speech. 
 
 Twilight. The red sun has slipped through the trees 
 beamless. Just at the zenith there is a streak of lumin 
 ous cloud. The wind rustles the dead leaves. A song 
 of minor strain is blown from the lane. A sparrow 
 flutters by and dives into the hedge with a silvery good
 
 DECEMBER 
 
 1 1 1 
 
 night. A rail fence topping the hill is drawn in broken 
 lines against the sky. A great lonesomeness seems to 
 have fallen on the fields a spirit of sadness. My heart 
 tells the rosary of its longings. 
 
 What a cheery fellow is the little downy woodpecker ! 
 A drummer who in the morning when frost sparkles 
 when the heart beats strong when hope is high taps, 
 taps, taps the onward measure to better living, to higher 
 deeds. I want no brighter companion for a Winter walk. 
 
 Far in the deep of the night 
 When the curved moon is low 
 
 Cheered by an inner light 
 Over the hills I go. 
 
 Out where the tall gray trees 
 Hold to me welcoming arms, 
 
 And, wrapped in mysteries, 
 Night has a thousand charms. 
 
 The time draws near. He who, once on a time, came 
 into the hill country of a far away land who loved the 
 birds who was often alone who called the flowers by 
 their names who was companion of the stars and of the 
 fields cannot be forgotten. The time draws near when 
 many will go into the woods for pines and cedars with
 
 ii2 DECEMBER 
 
 which to keep green His memory His love His un 
 selfishness. So tell of Him, little trees, that men may 
 not quarrel over His commandments but keep them in 
 His spirit.
 
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