EXPLORATIONS 



come in between the shingles and, begin- 

 ning with the roof, sweep your house into 

 the cellar just a mass of brown mold 

 before you know it. Then the frost and 

 sun tumble the cellar wall in upon it, and 

 where once your proud dwelling stood is 

 a grass-grown hollow. To-day's genera- 

 tion trips on the capstone of what was 

 the tower of its ancestors and thinks it 

 merely a projection of the earth's rib, 

 which it is and to which it has returned. 



I fancy every old Massachusetts town 

 has these woodland places that were once 

 the hopeful clearings of early settlers. 

 Now and then, roaming the deep wood 

 where only the creatures of the primal 

 forest seem to have freehold tenure, I 

 find an alien has strayed *from the elder 

 years, a hermit of the wood and of our 

 own time. I know a purple lilac that 

 dwells thus serenely, miles from present- 

 US 



