142 East and West 
Imagination is a soft light suffusing Nature, 
which while it renders outlines less distinct, 
clothes them with a fringe of association and 
mystery. Some charm is due to this and is 
never revealed to unimaginative and prosaic 
eyes. Thus the grove is fairest to those who 
have more inheritance from the gods, to 
faun-like natures endowed with bird con- 
sciousness and arboreal moods. They hear 
pipes and timbrels and woodland ditties 
still; as long ago it was they who heard them 
in classic groves. To them, these over- 
arching branches, these columnar trunks, are 
gateways of dreams to some divine country to 
which lead these winding wood-paths through 
the greensward. Here they listen, not only to 
the wren-tit’s trill and the golden-crowned’s 
plaintive note, but to incommunicable music 
heard out of doors alone. 
Perhaps these woodpaths lead to no more 
mysterious world than solitude itself, cer- 
tainly to none of more illusive charm:—the 
society of one’s best thoughts, of sylvan 
fancies and shy wood creatures in place of 
one’s kind. While nymphs have fled and 
fauns no longer dance upon the green, the 
familiar spirit of all groves is still the same: 
that spirit is the angel of Solitude. Observe 
