262 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
Winds in 
the forest. 
Bare 
boughs, 
creators of sentiment. The sound is not only 
restful, but under moonlight when the dark 
shadows of the wood seem doubly mysterious, 
it is suggestive of music, poetry, memories, 
love, life, death—all things of passion and of 
beauty tinged with sadness. 
It is a great change from the summer breeze 
and the barred moonlight on the wood-path 
to the windy days of March, when the bare 
branches moan under storm-skies and the sere 
leaves of the oak grate dryly on their brittle 
stems. It is not the season of poetic sounds, 
but it is the best time of all the year to study 
the trunks, boughs, and branches of the trees. 
Indeed, the windy March has always been 
reviled in the name of the leafy June; and yet 
it is a most interesting month, full of promise, 
full of graceful lines, full of silver-gray beauty. 
The trees stand stripped and bare, the trunks 
are blackened and weather-stained by winter 
rains, the twigs have not yet begun to redden 
under the ascending sap; but how beautifully 
the branches ramify and spread; how tenderly 
the little stems bunch up together or are etched 
in dark lines against the sky! What contours, 
what delicate light-and-shade, what infinite 
grace of line these bare branches show us! 
