ALONG THE ROAD I. 15 



through the silence of the meadows. Its voice is 

 the only sound which breaks the stillness, and that 

 itself seems part of the solitude. By day the clouds 

 marshal their shadows on it, and when night comes 

 the heavens sow it with stars, until it flows like a 

 dissolving belt of sky through the fragrant dark 

 ness. Sometimes, as I have come this way after 

 nightfall, I have heard its call across the invisible 

 fields, and in the sound I have heard I know not 

 what of deep and joyous mystery ; the long-past 

 and the far-off future whispering together, under 

 cover of the night, of those things which the stars 

 remember from their youth, and to which they look 

 forward in some remote cycle of their shining. 



Past old and well-worked farms, into which the 

 toil and thrift of generations have gone, the old 

 road leads me, and brings my thoughts back from 

 elemental forces and primeval ages to these later 

 centuries in which human life has overlaid these 

 hills and vales with rich memories. Wherever man 

 goes Nature makes room for him, as if prepared for 

 his coming, and ready to put her mighty shoulder 

 to the wheel of his prosperity. The old fences, 

 often decayed and fallen, are not spurned ; the 

 movement of universal life does not flow past them 

 and leave them to rot in their ugliness ; year by year 

 time stains them into harmony with the rocks, apd 

 every summer a wave out of the great sea of life 

 flings itself over them, and leaves behind some 

 slight and seemly garniture of moss and vine. The 



UNIVERSITY 



