And The Wonderful Clear, Pure Air
Wells Into Your Lungs The While By Voluptuous Inhalations, And
Makes The Eyes Bright,
And sets the heart tinkling to a new tune -
or, rather, to an old tune; for you remember in your
Boyhood
something akin to this spirit of adventure, this thirst for
exploration, that now takes you masterfully by the hand, plunges
you into many a deep grove, and drags you over many a stony crest.
it is as if the whole wood were full of friendly voice, calling you
farther in, and you turn from one side to another, like Buridan's
donkey, in a maze of pleasure.
Comely beeches send up their white, straight, clustered branches,
barred with green moss, like so many fingers from a half-clenched
hand. 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. You can hear the wind pass in the distance over the
tree-tops; sometimes briefly, like the noise of a train; sometimes
with a long steady rush, like the breaking of waves. And
sometimes, close at band, the branches move, a moan goes through
the thicket, and the wood thrills to its heart. Perhaps you may
hear a carriage on the road to Fontainebleau, a bird gives a dry
continual chirp, the dead leaves rustle underfoot, or you may time
your steps to the steady recurrent strokes of the woodman's axe.
From time to time, over the low grounds, a flight of rooks goes by;
and from time to time the cooing of wild doves falls upon the ear,
not sweet and rich and near at hand as in England, but a sort of
voice of the woods, thin and far away, as fits these solemn places.
Or you hear suddenly the hollow, eager, violent barking of dogs;
scared deer flit past you through the fringes of the wood; then a
man or two running, in green blouse, with gun and game-bag on a
bandoleer; and then, out of the thick of the trees, comes the jar
of rifle-shots.
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