204 Dead Leaves 



not be ugly and revengeful merely because it 

 is winter. There is nothing to fret us in 

 this change from shade to sunshine, from 

 green leaves to brown. The world is not 

 dead because of it. While the sun looks 

 down upon the woods to-day there arises a 

 sweet odor, pleasant as the breath of roses. 

 The world dead, indeed ! What more vig- 

 orous and full of life than the mosses cover- 

 ing the rich wood-mould ? Before me, too, 

 lies a long-fallen tree cloaked in moss greener 

 than the summer pastures. Not the sea alone 

 possesses transforming magic; there is also '*a 

 zvood-changQ into something rich and strange." 

 Never does the thought of death and decay 

 centre about such a sight. The chickadee 

 drops from the bushes above, looks the moss- 

 clad log over carefully, and, when again poised 

 on an overhanging branch, loudly lisps its 

 praises. What if it is winter when you wit- 

 ness such things ? One swallow may not 

 make a summer, but a single chickadee will 

 draw the sting from any winter morning. 



I never sit by the clustered dead leaves and 

 listen to their faint rustling as the wind moves 

 among them but I fancy they are whispering 

 of the days gone by. What of the vanished 



