16 PROSERPINA. 



7. The second piece I have on the table is a cluster 

 an inch or two deep of the moss that grows everywhere, 

 and that the birds use for nest-building, and we for pack- 

 ing, and the like. It is dry, since yesterday, and its fibres 

 define themselves against the dark ground in warm green, 

 touched with a glittering light. Note that burnished 

 lustre of the nldnute leaves ; they are necessarily always 

 relieved against dark hollows, and this lustre makes them 

 much clearer and brighter than if they were of dead 

 green. In that lustre and it is characteristic of them 

 they differ wholly from the dead, aloe-like texture of the 

 pineapple leaf ; and remind me, as I look at them 

 closely, a little of some conditions of chaff, as on heads of 

 wheat after being threshed. I will hunt down that clue 

 presently ; meantime there is something else to be noticed 

 on the old brick. 



8. Out of its emerald green cushions of minute leaves, 

 there rise, here and there, thin red threads, each with a 

 little brown cap, or something like a cap, at the top of it. 

 These red threads shooting up out of the green tufts, are, 

 I believe, the fructification of the moss ; fringing its sur- 

 face in the woods, and on the rocks, with the small 

 forests of brown stems, each carrying its pointed cap or 

 crest of infinitely varied ' mode,' as we shall see pres- 

 ently ; and, which is one of their most blessed functions, 

 carrying high the dew in the morning ; every spear balanc- 

 ing its own crystal globe. 



9. And now, with my own broken memories of moss 



