MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



holiest and best of her manifold blessings. 

 It was nothing to you, I know, my tree, 

 that the fire which swept over the heath 

 some five years since charred all your 

 lower branches and killed half your live 

 bark ; you had courage to resist and heart 

 to prevail ; and though those poor burnt 

 boughs are dead and gone for all time, you 

 still put forth smiling bundles of green 

 needles above quite as bravely as ever. 

 It was nothing to you that the great storm 

 of last autumn rent one huge branch in 

 twain, and tore off a dozen lesser arms 

 from your bleeding trunk in a wild out- 

 burst of fury. The night-jar now sits and 

 croons to you every evening in the after- 

 glow from those self-same stumps ; and 

 struggling sheaths of young buds push 

 through on the blown boughs that just es- 

 caped with their lives the fury of the tempest. 

 No wonder the Eastern fancy sees curled 

 dragons in the storms that so rend and 



O 



assail us ; but we like them, you and I, 



88 



