96 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
cattle in a pasture, and took by surprise a white 
cottage embowered in many trees of many species 
and then the road dropped into a half-ravine 
where a crystal spring lay unwrinkled beneath 
willows, common and laurel-leaved, and it dreamed 
back from its face willows and sky while a runnel 
which did not whisper slipped down to a stream 
hard by. On the banks our poet farmer had 
planted pine and many willows and a cut-leafed 
birch, beautiful enough to have adorned the 
woodlands of paradise. I was nosing around 
for the poet-farmer. 
His trees and vines had been disposed with 
much poet lore of place and variety on a bank 
which lifted its broadly rounded shoulder and 
looked over a generous expanse of river and 
bridge and highway and opposing acclivity and 
croft where distant vistas of apple trees shone 
like dashes of sea foam on ocean rocks. In my 
mind’s eye I could see our farmer friend in quiet 
love of loveliness with spade in hand and little 
trees for the planting lying close at hand, and 
he planting and planting and digging and planting. 
Can there be greater fun or greater poetry 
than planting trees and having their to-morrows 
of bloom and fruit haunt you with their proph- 
ecy? The thrust of the spade in the sod, the 
tossing out of the damp earth, with eternal 
harvest promise in its breath and its residuum 
of all earth’s yesterdays and also the kindly 
promise of its many to-morrows, and then when 
