436 WILLOWS. 



Here are no bright lights and deep shadows alternating on the 

 slopes of the glade ; here, the running becks make no fairy music 

 round moss-grown boulders, nor is the scented silence of the pine- 

 woods here. 



In the bracing winter airs of the hill-country, the wood-cutters 

 are at work. There is the clash of falling trees, the ring of axes, 

 the men shout and sweat, the horses snort and strain ; the chains 

 clank, the huge logs are dragged to the cranes ; galloping hoofs 

 strike rhythmically upon the frosted ground as the team rushes the 

 wagon up the hill. 



Thin streams of blue vapour wind among the trees from the fire 

 where the men temper their axes ; it now crackles and now sends 

 up sparks in showers ; it now leaps with a roar into tongues of 

 flame, now cowers under sullen clouds of smoke, as the brushwood 

 is heaped upon it. 



These are not the lands the Willow loves, and the mind gives 

 to its image no such surroundings of life and movement. The Willow 

 marks the course of some sluggish stream through lush meadows and 

 flat pastures, and makes a mirror or the deep scarcely moving waters. 

 Drowsy cattle stand up to their middle in the river, leisurely chewing 

 the cud, or shelter under the Willows in ranks, head to tail, the 

 swishing tails doing neighbourly service in keeping off the flies. 



The swallows bend and dart above the water, and dragon-flies 

 skim the surface, where rotating eddies appear and disappear ; a 

 reed-punt floating past hardly disturbs the floating leaf-discs of the 

 water-lilies. 



This is the country of dreams, of peace and quietude ; the 

 dreams of the solitary, the peace of lowly places, the quietude that 

 goes with humility. With these, rather than with sad or despairing 



