116 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



long tail-feathers streaming out behind like the rudder 

 of a monoplane. The summer afternoon is very still, 

 yet a hundred sounds are audible the chime of crickets, 

 the hum of bees, the croak of a frog in the spring, the 

 sweet cheeps and liquid songs of the birds, the murmur 

 of a lazy wind in the pines. How delicate, how peace- 

 ful, these sounds are! How unpro vocative of tiring 

 thought or senseless worry is this pasture solitude! 

 Here the beasts of the wood and birds of the air find 

 nourishment and go happily about their woodland har- 

 vesting. The declining sun bathes all the slope in "the 

 golden light of afternoon," and pushes its beams down 

 the forest aisles to play tag with the shadows. We lie 

 quiet beside the spring, and see a rabbit hop across one 

 of these aisles, his tail flashing white, and make for the 

 shelter of a young pine thicket. A catbird mews by the 

 raspberries. Out of the deep wood rings the elfin 

 clarion of a thrush. It is a little world of little creatures, 

 toiling happily for their bread; and yet the soul feels 

 for them all a curious kinship, here in this silent pasture 

 where the shadows lengthen and the rising sea-surf mur- 

 murs in the pines. To shoot the least and smallest 

 would be to break with murderous hands the bonds 

 which link Nature into unity. The drumming par- 

 tridge, the thrush which in shadowed thicket sounds his 

 liquid call, the poet with his verse how much of star- 

 dust is in each? It is only the rash man who attempts 

 the answer with a gun. 



