architect of mountains and stars, and sculptor 

 who fashions rocks, river beds, and sea cliffs, and 

 tree branches and cloud landscapes into artistic 

 and unfathomable loveliness. Each thing I see 

 him make seems his masterpiece, though I know 

 it is not that he has done above the ordinary for 

 him, but that I am filled with his glory of doing, 

 until 1 can contain no more, even as the sea's 

 channels can contain no more oceans. 



A walnut-tree is very beautiful. Its corruga- 

 tions of bark, dark almost to blackness, are always 

 possessed of witchery to my eyes. I see through 

 the tree as if it were dusky amber, the black 

 tawniness of walnut wood. No wonder that 

 through centuries walnut has been favored wood; 

 for who that has eyes to see but must love it? 

 But walnut is never beautiful by the skill of man, 

 be that skill however great, as when it stands 

 solitary on the green woodland background of a 

 hillside, and I seem to see through the graven 

 rind its wine- dregs of wood, and feel its beauty as 

 I do the beauty of the dawn. 



In winter, wild crab-trees are strong as 

 strength. Their trunks are usually twisted as if 

 some storm had wrenched them with violent and 

 outrageous hands, but the virile tree refused to be 

 twisted down, and wears its signs of struggle and 

 survival on its front like scars on a soldier's fore- 

 head. Why, a Greek wrestler's sinewy arm and 

 leg carved in bronze are not to my eyes so hercu- 

 lean and fascinating as a crab-apple trunk seen 

 under a winter's gray sky. When spring comes 

 and this bronze statue flashes into flower and 

 perfume such as even spring with her bewildering 

 riches of such, has only few of, I do not thrill 

 to that exotic loveliness of bloom as I do to the 

 sheer bronze of the sinewy trunk, standing knee- 

 deep in winter's snows. 



A soft maple is more beautiful in bark than 

 50 



I \ 



mSjIm 



A WALNUT 



