212 LOVERS OF NATURE 



ters nothing to me; the leaves I last saw upon 

 them are gone for evermore, nor shall I ever 

 see them come there again, ruddy in spring. 

 I would not see them again, even if I could; 

 they could never look again, as they used to do. 

 There are too many memories there. The hap- 

 piest days become the saddest afterward; let 

 us never go back, lest we too die. There are 

 no such oaks anywhere else, none so tall and 

 straight, and with such massive heads, on which 

 the sun used to shine as if on the globe of the 

 earth, one side in shadow, the other in bright 

 light. How often I have looked at oaks since, 

 and yet have never been able to get the same 

 effect from them ! Like an old author printed 

 in another type, the words are the same, but 

 the sentiment is different. The brooks have 

 ceased to run. There is no music now at the 

 old hatch where we used to sit, in danger of 

 our lives, happy as kings, on ' the narrow bar 

 over the deep water. The barred pike that 

 used to come up in such numbers are no more 

 among the flags. The perch used to drift down 

 the stream and then bring up again. The sun 

 shone there for a very long time, and the water 

 rippled and sang, and it always seemed to me 

 that I could feel the rippling and the singing 

 and the sparkling back through the centuries. 

 The brook is dead, for where man goes, nature 

 ends. I dare say there is water there still, but 

 it is not the brook ; the brook is gone like John 

 Brown's soul [not our John Brown]. There 

 used to be clouds over the fields, white clouda 



