in his ancient choir, and on bare plains, where only the surly sage brush 
leaned prone before the gale, and on lakes. where water tumbled like 
romping children when the winds frisked with them in gay moods of 
laughter and romping, or when the winds were in outrageous anger and 
plowed the fair waters with the.share of the hurricane, and in forests, 
where the paths are narrow and very dim and shadows are many and 
sunshine rare—O the goings of the winds in such a wood when leaves 
flutter, as half in dream, and the sound sobs like remote surf, and winds 
pass still, 
‘“Fainter onward. like wild birds that change 
Their season in the nigh’ and wail their way 
From cloud to cloud."’ 
and on headlands of the 
old sad ocean, where 
Mount Desert rocks, ban- 
nered with pine-trees 
fronted by the sea (rocks 
naked as the strength of 
death) or on headlands of 
the Golden Gate fronting 
burning sunsets and the 
far and barren reaches of 
the affable Pacific, and 
on cliffs of the Isle of 
Mona, where heather 
mixes honey with ocean winds and rocks lean darkly over Spanish 
Head, fruitful of shipwrecks, and against whose sword edges Philip's 
fleet proved but a feeble jest—on such headlands have | heard the 
winds and gloried in their tumults as in the coming of a friend; and 
many a night have I walked steamer decks to watch the marching 
Stars and hear the regurgitations of multitudinous waves a-sobbing; or 
in winter in the city, when cold winds keyed their voices to distress 
like beggars gaunt and cold, and shrieked like despair which had for- 
gotten laughter, when the thin-clad and well-clad hurried home as 
half afraid, and children play indoors, and snows whip up alley-ways and 
‘down crowded half-quieted streets (seeing a storm makes its own 
‘calm ), and down chimneys with singing like a last minstrel, or spits in 
your face like an indignant beggar to whom you have refused charity, 
or tender summer winds which stray down where long marsh grasses 
grow in hearing of the sea. 
THE SURF 
100 
