when the virginal green is like exquisite music Where 

 of life in miraculous suspense, nor the elation the Forest 

 of May, when the wild rose moves in soft Murmurs - 

 flame upon the thickets and the returned 

 magic of the cuckoo is an intoxication, nor 

 the elation of June, when the merle above the 

 honeysuckle and the cushat in the green- 

 glooms fill the hot noons with joy, and when 

 the long fragrant twilights are thrilled with 

 the passion of the nightjar. It has not this 

 rapture nor that delight ; but its elation is an 

 ecstasy that is its own. It is then that one 

 understands as one has never understood. It 

 is then that one loves the mystery one has but 

 fugitively divined. Where the forest murmurs 

 there is music : ancient, everlasting. Go to 

 the winter woods : listen there, look, watch, 

 and ' the dead months ' will give you a subtler 

 secret than any you have yet found in the 

 forest. Then there is always one possible 

 superb fortune. You may see the woods in 

 snow. There is nothing in the world more 

 beautiful than the forest clothed to its very 

 hollows in snow. That is a loveliness to which 

 surely none can be insensitive. It is the still 

 ecstasy of Nature, wherein every spray, every 

 blade of grass, every spire of reed, every 

 intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance, and 

 myriad form is renewed in continual change as 



ii 



