1 82 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



struck me on the brow, not with heavier blow than a soft 

 wind ; at Vv'hich the branches, readily trembling, all of them 

 were bending to the quarter where the holy mountain casts 

 its first shadow; yet not so far parted from their straightness, 

 that the little birds among the tops would leave the practice 

 of their every art; but with full joy singing they received the 

 early breezes among the leaves, which kept a burden to their 

 rhymes, such as gathers from bough to bough through the 

 pine forest upon the shores of Chiassi, w^hen i^Lolus lets forth 

 Sirocco. 



"Now had my slow steps carried me within the ancient 

 wood so far that I could not see back to where I had entered 

 it : and lo, a stream took from me further progress, which 

 toward the left with its little waves was bending the grass 

 that sprang upon its bank. . . . 



"With feet I stayed, and with my e5'es I passed to the 

 other side of the streamlet, to gaze at the great variety of the 

 fresh may; and there appeared to me, even as a thing appears 

 suddenly which turns aside through wonder every other thought, 

 a solitary lady, who was going along, singing, and culling 

 flower from flower, wherewith all her path was painted." 



Beautiful, indeed, is it not for those times? 



The forest has been the scene of fairy revelry, of 

 loves, of many a fight and kingly hunt. It was in a 

 forest where Puck ran, and with Bottom created con- 

 sternation, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream;" and, 

 again, it was beneath the trees where "the melancholy 

 Jaques" propounded his discourse on the seven ages. 

 Shakespeare's forests are all historic — Falstaff and 

 Heme's Oak; Touchstone and Audrey, and Rosalind, 

 in the Forest of Arden; Macbeth and Birnam Wood. 

 Spenser, too, knew the forest of his day, and rever- 

 enced it. No trees had yet died in Spenser's forest to 



