FROM A NEW ENGLAND HILLSIDE. 273 



LIII. 



I HAVE planted a bit of sky in the marshy 

 ground ;it the foot of the pasture. When 

 I put it there I could only see in it gray 

 smoke and haze, with now and then a glint 

 of blue, with coarse grass and golden-rods 

 and asters reversed around the borders. 

 But last night I found the whole moon in 

 it, full and round, with two dainty stars, 

 far, far down in the depths of the earth 

 beneath, and to-day there are towering 

 masses of cumulus cloud with frills and 

 ripples along the edges, luminous above, 

 and deepening below to a tone the real 

 lightness of which you will never know 

 until you undertake to paint it. You do not 

 realize how delicate and graceful and subtile 

 are the lines of tree and herb, until you 

 watch their reflections in a sheet of water. 

 Nature is so lavish of her beauty that it is 

 itsually with us all as it was with Yankee 

 Doodle, who &quot; Couldn t see the town for so 

 many houses.&quot; We need to have a tiny 

 morsel set apart and to concentrate our 

 T 



