306 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



Between the shaggy gray boles of these trees I look 

 across a meadow, toward the swamp. This mead- 

 ow was neglected last summer by the mowers, and 

 the prevailing autumn winds bent the dried grasses 

 southeastward, so that now they form an army 

 with straw-gold plumes, sweeping across the snow, 

 forever in motion, yet frozen fast. Beyond them 

 is a patch of rich chocolate, where the etcher has 

 rubbed the ink on with a liberal thumb, and then 

 the feathery rust of the tamaracks. You never 

 realize what a beautiful color rust is till you see a 

 tamarack swamp across the white fields, perhaps 

 with the amethyst lights of sunset beginning to 

 tinge the eastern hills. One of our ultra-modern 

 American poets has written a poem "To a Discarded 

 Steel Rail," in which he speaks of 



A smile which men call rust. 



The rust of the tamaracks is not a smile at the 

 vanity of man's restlessness, however, but at the 

 pleasant, sunny world and the dreaming thoughts 

 of resurgent sap. 



I went far afield to-day, through old orchards 

 where the deer had been pawing up the snow for 

 buried, frozen apples; through' a snow-laden stand 

 of young pines, where the aspect was of blobs of 

 white spattered on dark green, and where, no mat- 

 ter how low I stooped, the brushed branches pelted 

 me with cold powder; past fox-tracks and rabbit- 

 tracks and the bed of a partridge in the uncovered 

 leaves — I heard him go whirring off through the 

 snowy silences before I reached the spot ; into clear- 

 ings where the weed-top etchings were renewed, and 



