A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



sang,&quot; and offer us newly disclosed brackets to 

 hang our regrets upon. 



The winter aspects of the woods are like all the 

 other aspects of Nature when seen clearly and re 

 ceptively. They are strangely akin to music in 

 stirring unsuspected depths softly. The stark 

 tree stems with the afternoon sun streaming 

 through them a deep yellow sunshine that 

 had no warmth in it were often associated in 

 my mind with old hymns that I knew in child 

 hood, gaunt inexplicable hymns that never should 

 have been taught to childhood. And the winter 

 sunsets similarly flooded me at times with an in 

 expressible sense of loneliness and separation. 

 Why a mere deflection in the angle of light should 

 strike an unknown key in the minor mode, if 

 there is not an A minor in Nature herself, I can 

 not tell. Those winter sunsets were, by every 

 measurement of the eye, pageants of exultant 

 colour. But by the measurement of some deeper 

 and not understood sense, they were sheeted 

 ghosts masquerading in a bale light. All the 

 crimson rivers of life that one sees in August 

 were there, but they were clotted. The Isles of 

 the Blest, floating in sapphire seas, were apt to 

 reach out affrighted arms, and resolve it all into 

 a witches sunset with dun shadows lowering and 

 vast bleak stretches intervening. 



Sometimes the December sunset, seen through 

 the tree trunks, had momentary mockeries of un 

 earthly architecture and vast golden pampas out 

 of which waved gigantic fronds, and about which 



284 



