The tree bore his fruit in the midsummer glow. Said the child, "May I gather thy berries now?" "Yes; all thou canst see;

Take them; all are for thee,"

Said the tree, while he bent down his laden boughs low.

FROM

THE FAUN*

BY RICHARD HOVEY

HIST! there's a stir in the brush.

Was it a face through the leaves?

Back of the laurels a scurry and rush

Hillward, then silence, except for the thrush

That throws one song from the dark of the bush And is gone; and I plunge in the wood, and the swift soul cleaves

Through the swirl and the flow of the leaves,

As a swimmer stands with his white limbs bare to the sun

For the space that a breath is held, and drops in

the sea;

And the undulant woodland folds round me, intimate fluctuant, free,

Like the clasp and the cling of waters, and the reach and the effort is done;

There is only the glory of living, exultant to be.

*Copyright by Small, Maynard & Co. Used by permission of the present publishers, Duffield & Co.

Oh, goodly damp smell of the ground!
Oh, rough, sweet bark of the trees!
Oh, clear, sharp cracklings of sound!
Oh, life that's a-thrill and a-bound

With the vigor of boyhood and morning and the noontide's rapture of ease!

Was there ever a weary heart in the world?

A lag in the body's urge, or a flag of the spirit's wings?

Did a man's heart ever break

For a lost hope's sake?

For here there is lilt in the quiet and calm in the quiver of things.

Ay, this old oak, gray-grown and knurled,
Solemn and sturdy and big,

Is as young of heart, as alert and elate in his rest,
As the oriole there that clings to the tip of the twig
And scolds at the wind that it buffets too rudely
his nest.

IN THE HEMLOCKS*

BY JOHN BURROUGHS
From Wake-Robin

THE ancient hemlocks, whither I propose to take the reader, are rich in many things beside birds. Indeed, their wealth in this respect is owing

*By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

mainly, no doubt, to their rank vegetable growths, their fruitful swamps, and their dark, sheltered retreats.

Their history is of an heroic cast. Ravished and torn by the tanner in his thirst for bark, preyed upon by the lumberman, assaulted and beaten back by the settler, still their spirit has never been broken, their energies never paralyzed. Not many years ago a public highway passed through them, but it was at no time a tolerable road; trees fell across it, mud and limbs choked it up, till finally travelers took the hint and went around; and now, walking along its deserted course, I see only the footprints of coons, foxes, and squirrels.

Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal upon them. Here she shows what can be done with ferns and mosses and lichens. The soil is marrowy and full of innumerable forests. Standing in these fragrant aisles, I feel the strength of the vegetable kingdom, and am awed by the deep and inscrutable processes of life going on so silently about me.

No hostile forms with axe or spud now visit these solitudes. The cows have half-hidden ways through them, and know where the best browsing is to be had. In the spring the farmer repairs to their bordering of maples to make sugar; in July and August women and boys from all the country about penetrate the old Barkpeelings for raspberries and

blackberries; and I know a youth who wonderingly follows their languid stream, casting for trout.

ENGLISH WOODS AND AMERICAN*

BY JOHN BURROUGHS

From Fresh Fields

THE pastoral or field life of nature in England is so rank and full, that no woods or forests that I was able to find could hold their own against it for a moment. It flooded them like a tide. The grass grows luxuriantly in the thick woods, and where the grass fails, the coarse bracken takes its place. There was no wood spirit, no wildwood air. Our forests shut their doors against the fields; they shut out the strong light and the heat. Where the land has been long cleared, the woods put out a screen of low branches, or else a brushy growth starts up along their borders that guards and protects their privacy. Lift or part away these branches, and step inside, and you are in another world; new plants, new flowers, new birds, new animals, new insects, new sounds, new odors; in fact, an entirely different atmosphere and presence. Dry leaves cover the ground, delicate ferns and mosses drape the rocks, shy, delicate flowers gleam out here and there, the slender brown wood-frog leaps nimbly away from

*By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

your feet, the little red newt fills its infantile pipe, or hides under a leaf, the ruffed grouse bursts up before you, the gray squirrel leaps from tree to tree, the wood pewee utters its plaintive cry, the little warblers lisp and dart amid the branches, and sooner or later the mosquito demands his fee. Our woods suggest new arts, new pleasures, a new mode of life. English parks and groves, when the sun shines, suggest a perpetual picnic, or Maying party; but no one, I imagine, thinks of camping out in English woods. The constant rains, the darkened skies, the low temperature, make the interior of a forest as uninviting as an underground passage. I wondered what became of the dry leaves that are such a feature and give out such a pleasing odor in our woods. They are probably raked up and carried away; or, if left upon the ground, are quickly resolved into mold by the damp climate.

.

NATURE*

BY HENRY DAVID THOREAU

O NATURE! I do not aspire

To be the highest in thy quire —

To be a meteor in the sky,

Or comet that may range on high;

*By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.