26 UNDER THE TREES. 



times ; youth and its overflow were gone forever ; 

 but in the hour of maturity there remained a noble 

 beauty, which touched all imaginations and com 

 municated to all visible things a splendor of which 

 the most radiant hours of early summer had been 

 only faintly prophetic. In the calm of these golden 

 days the autumn flowers reigned with a more than 

 regal state, and when the first cold breath of winter 

 touched them, they fell from their great estate 

 silently and royally as if their fate were matched to 

 their rank. And now the fields were bare once 

 more. 



From such a dream as this I often awake joy 

 fully to find the drama still in its first act, and to 

 feel still before me the ever-deepening interest and 

 ever-widening beauty of the miracle play to which 

 Nature annually bids us welcome. Across this 

 noble playground, with its sweep of landscape and 

 its arch of sky, I often wander with no companions 

 but the flowers, and with no desire for other fellow 

 ship. Here, as in more secluded and quiet places, 

 Nature confides to those who love her some deep 

 and precious truths never to be put into words, but 

 ever after to rise at times over the horizon of 

 thought like vagrant ships that come and go against 

 the distant sea line, or like clouds that pass along 

 the remotest circle of the sky as it sleeps upon the 

 hills. The essence of play is the unconscious over 

 flow of life that seeks escape in perfect self-forget- 

 fulness. There is no effort in it, no whip of the 

 will driving the unwilling energies to an activity 



