Like Well Born Children With A Beautiful Environment,
They Bathe All The Wood Land Flowers And Trees With Their
Beneficent
Water until they leave a trail of richest verdure
from the mountain to the sea, where they mingle in the
Great
expanse of waters not to perish, but to be resurrected, into
glorious summer clouds, to carry life and health to the thirsty
plants of earth.
The very sight of their rushing crystal waters beside the
widening road on a hot day gives one a new lease on life. Truly
did Wordsworth say, "earth has not anything to show more fair."
All afternoon we wandered "by shallow rivers to whose falls
melodious birds sang madrigals." We, like the river, were
journeying "at our own sweet will."
Grand balsam fir sprang from the crevices of the rock, family
groups of white birch rose and spread their graceful masses of
foliage on either side of us; mounds of virgin bowers, wild
grape vines, and bittersweet crowned the rocky sides of the
cliffs, spreading from tree to tree or hung from them like
folded curtains; and the sunlight and shadow among pine and
hemlock where grew mosses, ferns and flowers, made vast sheets
of rich mosaic. The hermit and veery thrush sang in the woods
around, tree swallows cut the air above in graceful flight, and
even the lone scout out for a hike, carrying his supplies, had
yielded to his environment and sang such a rapturous strain (to
which a redwing whistled a gurgling accompaniment), we were
reminded of these lines from Roger's "Human Life": "And feeling
hearts, touch them but rightly, pour a thousand melodies unheard
before." He seemed to sing out of very wantonness, and his song
seemed to have that soft undercurrent of melody heard in the
chimes of Belgium - with just a hint of plaintiveness in it to
make the joy and the brightness of the day complete.
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