THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS 



The indistinct contours and delicate 

 lights of the drifting vapors and cloud 

 forms, as they wander across the trees, 

 blend with the serene aspect of the 

 forest. At other times the clouds 

 gather into banks and lie motionless in 

 some valley or rest like a veil upon the 

 mountain tops. Wordsworth has de- 

 scribed these effects in his graphic 

 way by saying,— 



Far-stretclied beneath the many-tinted hills, 

 A mighty waste of mist the valley fills, 

 A solemn sea ! whose billows wide around 

 Stand motionless, to awful silence bound : 

 Pines, on the coast, through mist their tops 



uprear 

 That like to leaning masts of stranded ships 



appear. 



In spring or summer just before sun- 

 rise it is very beautiful to see how these 

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