FAR ALTARS 



bracken pauses in a pool that shows now 

 brown, now sorrel, now satiny green as the 

 clouds wait or hasten above and the 

 supple rushes lean back and forth. This 

 is the tourney field of gorgeous dragon- 

 flies. Emerald, gold, and amethyst, they 

 hold resplendent play, sparkling above the 

 water like magnets of light, causing the 

 placid depths to shimmer, and drawing 

 the minnows from their sunlit rest. Even 

 the bird-dog does not know this pool. No 

 messenger more personal than a prowling 

 shot comes there from man. 



It is a sturdy conceit that wonders why 

 Nature should spend her freshest art on 

 treasure scenes she decrees invisible, as if 

 the mother of mountains, tempests, deserts, 

 toiled anxiously for the approval of a 

 particular generation, keeping one eye on 

 Mr. Gray and the other on Mr. Emerson 

 in the hope that they will justify her flower 

 blushing unseen and her excusable rhodora. 

 Nature is far too unmoral to bother about 

 rendering economists an account for her 

 spendthrift loveliness. She willfully de- 

 serts the imitation Sicilian garden, though 

 she would be well paid to stay, and rollicks 

 in the jungle, clothing magnificently the 

 9 [97] 



