Under the Oaks and Elsewhere 



To take the same walk daily is not a monot- 

 onous, dull round as when we hurry from house 

 to office and return. We need but to try to 

 prove this, as when I took the same path for 

 five successive days in early spring. In the 

 brook I saw minnows with gorgeously tinted 

 fins, and their brilliant color brightened the 

 outlook whichever way I turned. 



Where swarms of minnows show their little heads 



Staying their waving bodies 'gainst the streams, 



To taste the luxury of sunny beams 



Tempered with coolness. How they ever wrestle 



With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle 



Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand ! 



If you but scantily hold out the hand. 



That very instant one will not remain ; 



But turn your eye — and they are there again. 



See them as Keats here describes ; this needs 

 no cunning of a trained eye and the subsequent 

 vexations of the day will be softened to a more 

 endurable degree. 



The second day, the bridge pee-wee was 

 perched upon a bare branch of a horn-beam ov- 

 erhanging the brook and its simple song called 

 back a teeming past as well as foretold the 

 wealth of a coming summer. Other birds 



239 



