MARCH 45 



' Deepens the murmur of the falling floods, 

 And adds a browner horror to the woods.' 



Highland woods, indeed, consisting chiefly of pine, 

 keep their kindly green throughout the dark months, 

 but there are thousands of square miles without any 

 trees at all, save here and there shreds and patches of 

 wind-tormented birches, or, in steep sheltered glens, 

 little groups of that most Highland of all trees, the 

 aspen the quakin' asp, as Lowland Scotsmen call it. 

 Even these are disappearing ; the storms of successive 

 winters thin away the veterans ; and, what deepens the 

 melancholy, no saplings or seedlings are allowed to 

 perpetuate the grove, so closely do sheep and deer 

 nibble away the young growth. 



But though trees have vanished from wide tracts, 

 and can never return by natural regeneration, unless 

 browsing animals are fenced off, their names are 

 indelibly inscribed on the map. Opposite the window 

 where I sit writing, Ben Urie rears a snow-covered 

 front. The broad flanks of this hill may be searched 

 in vain for a yew tree, yet its name Beinn iubhraigh 

 probably commemorates a grove of yews which has 

 long since disappeared. Even had it remained, it 

 would have served little to lighten the melancholy of 

 this mid-March winter, for it is the melancholy aspect 

 of the yew which has chiefly impressed itself upon the 

 poets, and has caused this sombre tree to become as 

 closely associated with churchyards as cypresses 

 Horace's invisce cupressus are with Eastern ceme- 

 teries. 



Even Tennyson, than whom no poet ever interpreted 



