AUGUST 173 



and that my hands and my eyes might live 

 again in the breathing, happy leaves, on which 

 the dews should sparkle, and from which the 

 spider's web should float in glistening silver and 

 which should be white with rime at frost-tide. 



There are to be beech-trees in the open 

 glade beyond the clipped hedges, their grey 

 boles so flecked with lichens that they are a 

 part of that green which makes the beech the 

 coolest and most companionable of summer 

 trees. He is to be pitied to whom August 

 brings no memories if it brings no sight of 

 the fluttering garments of great beeches, half- 

 revealing and half-hiding the slender grace of 

 their delicate limbs. For grow they ever so 

 great, and live they ever so long, there is a 

 perpetual youth about them, and a most 

 charming coquetry for ever animates their 

 boughs. It is among beech-trees that one 

 hears in late August evenings an occasional 

 bell-tone from a hidden wood-thrush into which 

 "the soul of a year's music is distilled into a 

 few drops of sound." It is in beechen shade 

 that a certain shy little flycatcher sings his 

 delicious strain, so far away, so near at hand, 

 as if he were singing to himself in a pure 



