104 1(JfMBLES OF A <DO!MINI8 



roots among the mossy draperies. The golden petals of 

 the globe-flowers have long since fallen away, but there 

 is a very forest of their leaves among the mountain-fern 

 that fringes all the shore. 



Grey and wrinkled, as by time and tempest, are the 

 oaks that bear up the green roof of the glade. The 

 rowan-trees, with roots like talons clutching the battered 

 rocks, are not yet plundered of their coral clusters, for 

 birds do not greatly love the shadows of this solitary 

 glen. The white stems of the birches, whose trembling 

 leafage mingles with the green mist overhead, seem to 

 stand among their bolder brothers like the dryads of the 

 valley. So steep is the ravine that the torrent here is 

 little but a chain of pools and cataracts ; now a hollow 

 worn into the living rock, where the sturdy trout just 

 hold their own in the rush of the current, now a fall that 

 gleams among the trees like the white form, "the 

 substance of a happy dream " that feasted the glad eyes 

 of Khcecus in that haunted vale of Thessaly. 



So deep is the still hollow that the voice of the great 

 river rushing through the valley, near and yet unseen, 

 seems faint and distant, and like the t murmur of the 

 summer sea. But when 



" a sudden rush of air 



Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead, 



And gleams of sunshine toss and flare 

 Like torches down the path I tread " 



the swelling sound is borne upward like the roar of the 

 tide upon an ocean beach, or the stir of storm-wind in 

 the pines. 



