



strength and beauty spring. A little brook 

 crosses the road under a rattling bridge, and 

 wanders on across the fields, limpid and 

 rippling, running its little strain of music 

 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 

 darkness. Sometimes, as I have come this 

 way after nightfall, I have heard its call 

 across the invisible fields, and in the sound 

 1 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 



31 



u ' 





-r.\\ 

 S *!/ // 



