140 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



trees now close us in as they did not in winter. 

 Many a distant view has been wholly shut out. 

 We look for some familiar landmark and are 

 perplexed for a time because we cannot see it. 

 In the woods, the gaps between the evergreen 

 trees have been filled in. It is as if broken 

 ranks had been completed by the bringing up 

 of reserve battalions. The garden in which 

 there was no shelter from wind and rain, and 

 into which we felt as if any passer-by could 

 look, is now withdrawn from the world of man ; 

 and the blazing sun — as intolerable at times as 

 the winter's cold — and the heaviest rain, can 

 both be defied. The tree-lined roads are 

 arched over from side to side by a shady 

 canopy. We know it, we feel it, without look- 

 ing up. Of the bare rafters which in winter 

 were all that was left of this canopy we were 

 hardly conscious. 



It is difficult for us, in summer, not to think 

 of the trees as rejoicing. The wind rustling 

 through the leaves is like a happy song. All 

 the elaborate preparations they made many 

 months ago have now received well-nigh their 

 full accomplishment. The fiowers have come 

 and gone. In wonderfully varied ways they 



