238 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



always repay any effort you may expend pushing 

 through the reeds and lily pads. Coming downstream 

 upon one, you might readily miss it, for the sand bar 

 always noses a little way across the mouth, even when 

 it has not closed up the bank completely, and so hides 

 it from view. The mouth of the swale is sometimes 

 marked in our country, however, by a sycamore tree, 

 the white mottled bark shining out against the land- 

 scape. Presumably the tree has found security here, 

 where the current no longer worries its roots, and has 

 survived. Stopping your craft before the entrance, you 

 look into a cool green forest glade over a carpet of lily 

 pads, with the golden blossoms of the cow lilies gaily 

 gemming it. You are less than mortal if this water 

 glade does not tempt you to push your canoe through 

 the leaves slowly, secretly, for the stillness of the river 

 is even deeper here, where the water mirror is black 

 ahead and its oozy edges are odorous with sweet flag. 

 The very flowers speak the silent wildness of the place, 

 for here, if anywhere, the shy cardinal flower makes a 

 red reflection on the water, an incomparable red in this 

 dark, ^hadowy spot, and here the purple loosestrife 

 grows in such a gloom that we understand at last why 

 Shakespeare wrote that "our cold maids do dead men's 

 fingers call them . ' ' (To be sure, it is disputed that Shakes- 

 peare did mean loosestrife by "long purples." We 

 hasten to make this admission before somebody hurls 

 the Variorum "Hamlet" at our head!) Here, also, the 



