A Dead Oak. 227 



with more tall bracken, thorn thickets, and maple 

 bushes, and noting now the strange absence of living 

 things. Not a bird rises startled from the boughs, 

 not a rabbit crosses the way ; for in the forest, as in 

 the fields, there are places haunted and places de- 

 serted, save by occasional passing visitors. Sud- 

 denly the bracken ceases, and the paths disappear 

 under a thick grove of beeches, whose dead leaves 

 and beech-mast seem to have smothered vegetation. 



Insensibly the low ground rises again, the brake 

 and bushes and underwood reappear, but the trees 

 grow thinner and farther apart ; they are mainly 

 oaks, which like to stand separate in their grandeur. 

 There is one dead oak all alone in the midst of the 

 underwood, with a wide space around it. A vast 

 gray trunk, split and riven and hollow, with a single 

 pointed branch rising high above it, dead, too, and 

 gray : not a living twig, not so much as a brown leaf, 

 gives evidence of lingering life. The oak is dead ; 

 but even in his death he rules, and the open space 

 around him shows how he once overshadowed and 

 prevented the growth of meaner trees. More oaks, 

 then a broad belt of beeches, and out suddenly into 

 an opening. 



It is but a stone's throw across — a level mead 

 walled in with tall trees, whose leaves in myriads lie 

 on the brown tinted grass. One great thicket only 

 grows in the midst of it. The nights are chilly here, 

 as elsewhere ; but in the day, the winds being kept 

 oflT by the trees and underwood, it becomes quite 

 summer-like, and the leaves turn to their most bril- 

 liant hues. The stems of the bracken are 3-ellow ; 

 the fronds vary from pale green and gold, comniin- 



