AUTUMN TIDES 



their summer privacy and parody their 

 spring reunions and rivalries ; some of them 

 sing a little after a silence of months. The 

 robins, blue-birds, meadow-larks, sparrows, 

 crows, all sport, and call, and behave in a 

 manner suggestive of spring. The cock 

 grouse drums in the woods as he did in 

 April and May. The pigeons reappear, 

 and the wild geese and ducks. The witch- 

 hazel blooms. The trout spawns. The 

 streams are again full. The air is humid, 

 and the moisture rises in the ground. Na- 

 ture is breaking camp, as in spring she was 

 going into camp. The spring yearning and 

 restlessness is represented in one by the in- 

 creased desire to travel. 



Spring is the inspiration, fall the expira- 

 tion. Both seasons have their equinoxes, 

 both their filmy, hazy air, their ruddy forest 

 tints, their cold rains, their drenching fogs, 

 their mystic moons ; both have the same 

 solar light and warmth, the same rays of 

 the sun; yet, after all, how different the 

 feelings which they inspire ! One is the 

 morning, the other the evening; one is 

 youth, the other is age. 



The difference is not merely in us ; there 

 is a subtle difference in the air, and in the 

 '65 



