48 FAMILIAR TREES 



frost-work of intensely brilliant silver, which is 

 relieved against the clear sky like a burning fringe, 

 for some distance on either side of the sun." This 

 phenomenon it is to which Shakespeare alludes 

 when he makes the heroic but ill-fated Richard II. 

 speak of the sun : 



" When from ander this terrestrial ball 

 He fires the proud top of the eastern Pines ; " 



and this, too, Wordsworth refers to more precisely 

 in his " Stanzas composed in the Simplon Pass " : 



" My thoughts become bright like yon edging of Pines 

 On the steep's lofty verge : how it blacken'd the air! 

 Bat, touched from behind by the sun, it now shines. 

 With threads that seem part of his own silver hair." 



TRANSVERSE SECTION OF NEEDLE LEAF OF SCOTS FIR 



