SHOWERS OF GOSSAMER 



are whipped off. Others again are united in the 

 air after release." 



There are many things about gossamer that are 

 not as yet very clear, but its beauty is beyond dis- 

 pute. Every alert person who has seen a long 

 stretch of golf-course, or acres of ploughed land, or 

 a piece of moor, or half a mile of hedgerow covered 

 with gossamer, must have admired the sight. The 

 admiration grows when the gossamer is bediamonded 

 with dew or silvered with the frost, or when the sun 

 makes rainbows among it. It is one of the most 

 beautiful things in the world ; and when the threads 

 along the ground sparkle and vibrate, the earth 

 seems to be quivering, like a living thing, as far as 

 the eye can reach. It seems like an emblem of the 

 intricacy of the threads in the web of life. It 

 recalls Goethe's famous words about Nature 

 " She moves and works above and beneath, working 

 and weaving, an endless motion, birth and death, 

 an infinite ocean, a changeful web, a glowing life." 



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