THE MYSTERY OF THE FOREST. 



Mystery ever pervades the forest.' Silence ami whispers — stilt 

 (jloonis — sudden radiances — zephyrs and idle airs — all these haunt 

 the woodland at every season. But it is not in their amplitude thai great 

 forests reveal their secret life. In the first vernal weeks the wave of 

 green creates a shimmering veil of delicate beauty, through which the 

 missel-thrush calls, and the loud screech of the jay is heard like a savage 

 trumpet cry. 



The woods then are full of virginal beauty. There is intoxication 

 in the light air. The cold azure among the beech spaces, or cohere the 

 tall elms sway in the east wind is like the sea, enchanting, exquisitely 

 unfamiliar. 



Then follow days u'hen the violet creeps through the mosses at 

 the base of great oaks — when the fading snow-bloom or the black 

 thorn gives way to the trailing doqrose — when the myriads of bees 

 among the chestnut blossoms fill the air with a continuous drowsy 

 unrest — when the cushat calls from the heart of the fir — ichen beyond 

 the green billowy roof of the elm, the oak, the beech, the sycamore, the 

 tardy ash — silver voices of the South fall through leagues of warm air 

 as unseen birds sail on the long tides of the wind. 



Then in truth is there magic in the troods! The forest is alive 

 in its divine youth! Every bough is a vast plume of joy! On every 

 branch a sunray falls or a thrush sways in song! There is not a spot 

 where fragrance, beauty, life, are lacking. 



But the forest wearies of this interminnble exuberance, this daily 

 and nightly charm of exultant life. It desires the enchantment of 

 silence, of dreams. One day the songs cease: the nests are cold. In the 

 meadows the hare .sleeps and the corncrake calls: by the brook the 

 cattle stand motioydess. In the green glooms of the forest a sigh is 

 heard. Now may be seen and fell that secret presence which in the 

 spring hid behiml songs and blossom and later clothed itself in dense 

 veils of green and all the magic of Ju7ie. The leaves know it, the 

 bracken knoio it. The sea'ct is in every thicket, is palpable in every 

 glade, is abroad in every shadow! It is not a rumor, for that might 

 he the wind stealthily lifting its long wings from glade to glade. It 

 is not a whisper, for that might be the secret passage of unquiet airs, 

 furtive heralds of unloosing thunder. It is not a sigh, for that might 

 be the breath of branch and bough, of fern frond and grass. It is an 

 ineffable communication, coming along the ways of silence, the ways 

 of sourul — mysteriously gathered from below, from on high, from 

 everywhere! 



But the hush is dispelled at last! The long lances of the rain come 

 slanting through the branches. They break and fall with pcdtering 

 rush. The hoarse mutterings and sudden crashing roar of thunder 

 possess the whole forest! The secret spirit that dwells uithin it recedes 

 inaudibly all through the hot noons, warm midnights and long days 

 of July and August. 



In the September woods the forest soul still eludes, with the unhurried 

 but sure withdrawal of the shadow! In that month the sweet incessant 

 toil of bird and beast lessens: there is a silence while the birch takes on 

 her mantle of pale gold, ami oak and ash arc neirly ctad in russet. In 



the dusky ways faint azure mists gather. The fawn no longer leaps 

 noiselessly through the fern — there is a thin dry rustle as of a dove 

 brushing swiftly by. The woodpecker still taps at the bole of the 

 oak — the squirrel is more gay tlian ever. On frosty mornings ichen the 

 gossamer webs are woven across every bramble one may pass from 

 covert to covert, from glade to glaite, and find the secret just about to be 

 revealed. Somewhere beyo7id the group of birches, beside that oak 

 it may be! Or just beyond that thorn! But it is never overtaken. 'Tis 

 as evasive as moonlight in the hollow of a ivave. 



In October ivith the nocturnal advent of the blighting frosts, disclosure 

 seems inevitable. When the leaves grow sear and wan and falling, 

 streio every billowy breeze, fluttering from the branches like tired, starving 

 swallows left behind in the great procession of migration — surely the 

 surprise is imminent — yet something is witheld! 



The subtle charm of November woods is the deep blue spaces which 

 he so close together along every avenue of meeting boughs. The azure 

 mist which lies below like thin, faint smoke, lias the spell of silent 

 moonlight — a light all its own, as mysterious as the flame which burns 

 in the heart of the rainbow! The earth breathes the breath of fallen 

 leaves, of moss, of tangled fern, of undergrowth, of trees. The windless 

 gray-blue sky leans so low that one may almost penetrate that other 

 tporld! 



In the dead months of late winter the forest lives its oum peculiar 

 life. The spirit is not asleep, as poets feign. Slumber has entered 

 into the woods, has made the deep silences its habitation, but the forest 

 itself is awake, mysterious, omnipresent , splendid in its naked majesty. 

 One says lightly that there is no green thing left — but there is always 

 green fern somewhere — there is always moss hidden among the roots of 

 the beeches. On the ash and elm the wood ivy hangs its spiked leaves. 

 On the oaks the dull green of the mistletoe droops in graceful clusters, 

 but its glistening cream-white berries are lost in the immense uniformity 

 of desolation. 



To pass through those unnler aisles of the forest is to know an elation 

 foreign to the melancholy of November and the first fall of the leaf. It 

 IS then one loves -the mystery but furtively divined. In the murmur 

 of the trees there is music, ancient, everlasting. 



Listen, watch — and soon the quiet months will show you a subtler 

 secret than any you have yet found in the forest! In ttiat still ecstacy 

 of Nature every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every 

 intricate twig is clad with radiance, and myriad forms arise under the 

 magic hand of the great tvhile Artificer! 



The groves ivere God's first temples. Ere man learned to hew the 

 shaft, lay the achitrave and spread the roof above it, ere he framed 

 the lofty vault to gather and roll back the sowuls of anthems, he knelt 

 down in the darkling wood, amidst the cool ami silence, and offered to 

 the Mightiest his solemn thanks and supplication! His simple heart 

 could not resist the sacred influence which from the stilly twilight of 

 the place and from, the gray old trunks tlmt mingled their mossy boughs 

 high in the heaven, stole over him. and bowed his spirit with the thought 

 of boundless power and inaccessible majesty! 



15 



