20 



gone cheerly away, lie you down in their 

 stead ; let the gliding current lave hand and 

 lip ; pick a fine white pebble from its bub- 

 bling bed, a trail of green moss from the 

 edge, and you shall hold a talisman. 



Bear it far as you will to the solitude 

 of desert or city you have but to lay it in 

 your hollowed palm or close against your 

 cheek, and with shut eyes you shall see 

 again this brown, swelling hill, clear for half 

 its breadth, this tangle of bough and trunk, 

 this enlacement of vine ; you shall hear 

 again beat o' axe, rippling water, sighing 

 sough of boughs overhead, wind aruffie in 

 dry leaves, crows calling one to another 

 across the open ; above all, you shall smell 

 bruised bark and bud, and rifted wood, and 

 new earth, crisping at the touch of fire. 



The dropping sun dips half below the sky- 

 line. The wind freshens. The plant-bed 

 is afire. All day stout arms have been heap- 

 ing it high with brushwood, with round sticks, 

 with logs big as a man can carry. Twenty 

 yards square, of rich slant earth, it stands, 

 a red line to windward, creeping, flickering, 

 sending before it licking tongues of watery 

 flame. The last sun-ray has vanished you 

 would never see such burning in its light. 

 Let the wind hold steady one hour here 



