212 RIVERBY 



again, even if I could ; they could never look again 

 as they used to do. There are too many memories 

 there. The happiest days become the saddest after- 

 ward ; let us never go back, lest we, too, die. There 

 are no such oaks anywhere else, none so tall and 

 straight, and with such massive heads, on which the 

 sun used to shine as if on the globe of the earth, 

 one side in shadow, the other in bright light. How 

 often I have looked at oaks since, and yet have never 

 been able to get the same effect from them! Like 

 an old author printed in another type, the words are 

 the same, but the sentiment is different. The brooks 

 have ceased to run. There is no music now at the 

 old hatch where we used to sit, in danger of our 

 lives, happy as kings, on the narrow bar over the 

 deep water. The barred pike that used to come up 

 in such numbers are no more among the flags. The 

 perch used to drift down the stream and then bring 

 up again. The sun shone there for a very long 

 time, and the water rippled and sang, and it always 

 seemed to me that I could feel the rippling and the 

 singing and the sparkling back through the centu- 

 ries. The brook is dead, for where man goes, na- 

 ture ends. I dare say there is water there still, but 

 it is not the brook; the brook is gone, like John 

 Brown's soul [not our John Brown]. There used 

 to be clouds over the fields, white clouds in blue 

 summer skies. I have lived a good deal on clouds; 

 they have been meat to me often; they bring some- 

 thing to the spirit which even the trees do not. I 

 see clouds now sometimes when the iron gripe of hell 



