WILD PASTURES 



the farmer of a century and more gone 

 grubbed from the rocky fields and made 

 into metes and bounds. There they stand 

 to-day, just as he set them, grim me- 

 mentos of toil which the softening hand 

 of time has made beautiful. Where 

 cattle still travel such lanes day by day 

 these walls are undecorated, but many 

 of the lanes are untraveled and have 

 been so these fifty years. Such are gar- 

 landed with woodbine, sentineled by red 

 cedars, and fragrant with the breath of 

 wild rose, azalea, and clethra. 



Side by side with this lawn-like lane 

 is another which was once traversed by 

 the cattle of the next farm, but which 

 has not been used for a lifetime. In 

 this the wild things of the wood are 

 untrammeled, save by one another, and 

 they hold it in riotous possession. Just 

 as the first lane is tame and sleek this 

 4 



