THE PLAY OF LEAVES 



him, in a silence made vocal only by a 

 teasing gale. In autumn they are loud 

 beneath his tread. Snow alone can hush 

 them. When they are voiceless they are 

 dead at last, but already their successors, 

 snugly cradled and blanketed with cotton, 

 are being rocked to sleep upon the twigs. 



The rippling, shimmering birch upon a 

 wind-stroked hill talks with falling cadence, 

 like a chant. The naiad willow, arching 

 lowland brooks, speaks as water, very 

 secretly. The oak could not be silent, 

 with his story of many days to tell, and 

 keeping his leaves throughout the snow 

 time, his speech is perpetual. Only the 

 pines and kindred evergreens are now and 

 then melancholy, as if the new needles and 

 leaves looked down upon the carpet below, 

 forever thickened, of those whose hold 

 grew faint. Leaves of cherry and apple, 

 born into a world of tinted blossoms, are 

 gay to the last. The sprays of locust 

 leaves that keep their yellow-green until 

 the sober tree flowers into clustered fra- 

 grance of white, arboreal sweet peas whis- 

 per by night and day of the bats and tree 

 toads that dwell in their channeled and 

 vine-loved bark. The sycamore's voice is 

 [87J 



