Mighty Oaks Stand To The Ankles In A Fine Tracery Of
Underwood; Thence The Tall Shaft Climbs Upwards, And The Great
Forest Of Stalwart Boughs Spreads Out Into The Golden Evening Sky,
Where The Rooks Are Flying And Calling.
On the sward of the Bois
d'Hyver the firs stand well asunder with outspread arms, like
fencers saluting; and the air smells of resin all around, and the
sound of the axe is rarely still.
But strangest of all, and in
appearance oldest of all, are the dim and wizard upland districts
of young wood. The ground is carpeted with fir-tassel, and strewn
with fir-apples and flakes of fallen bark. Rocks lie crouching in
the thicket, guttered with rain, tufted with lichen, white with
years and the rigours of the changeful seasons. Brown and yellow
butterflies are sown and carried away again by the light air - like
thistledown. The loneliness of these coverts is so excessive, that
there are moments when pleasure draws to the verge of fear. You
listen and listen for some noise to break the silence, till you
grow half mesmerised by the intensity of the strain; your sense of
your own identity is troubled; your brain reels, like that of some
gymnosophist poring on his own nose in Asiatic jungles; and should
you see your own outspread feet, you see them, not as anything of
yours, but as a feature of the scene around you.
Still the forest is always, but the stillness is not always
unbroken.
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