Class _3S£SaZ- 
 Book ,Wn 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSrn 
 
JpDur Ba^0 of (§o53i 
 
jTour Ba^0 of (§oh 
 
 By 
 
 Harriet Prescott SpofFord 
 
 Decorations by 
 Anna C. Tomlinson 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 RICHARD G. BADGER 
 
 The Gorham Press 
 1905 
 
Copyright 1905 by Harriet Prescott Spofford 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Vwu Copies WtiCtfivuJ 
 
 JUL 13 1906 
 
 'UMSi. d* AAc. Nw , 
 CUPf a. 
 
 
 Printed at the Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 
 
:fox Co. tjje Winter is ^ast 
 
 

 >rl. 
 
 

 LOOKING at it merely as a 
 thing of wonder, among all 
 miracles there is no greater 
 than the coming of the 
 sprmg. The earth was so brown and 
 bare and hard, — slowly a mist swathes 
 it, the suspicion of a tender green, and 
 everywhere the grass is growing, 
 everywhere as if each particle of sand 
 and soil were aspiring to a higher 
 form of being. This stem was yester- 
 day like a dead coral branch, to-day 
 a tiny red sprout has parted the wood. 
 Whence comes it, what is it, by what 
 hidden movement, from what un- 
 known life? While boughs are bare 
 of leaves, all at once the cherry-tree 
 has hung a snowy veil of blossoms on 
 its stems. What is the imprisoned 
 
 s%.. 
 
mystery? Then the friendly dande- 
 lion hastens to scatter its gold, down in 
 the swamps the arum makes a green 
 fire, and the maples flush in clouds 
 where hints of scarlet are lost in rus- 
 set; everywhere sapphire is melting 
 into emerald, the willows make a sun- 
 shine of their own, a veil of filmy 
 ^^ grey blends all together in a dream of 
 I'^jJ^/'V tender color, and suddenly thickets 
 V.^^^ r^^and vines and lofty trees are waving 
 f ^S^5^^=:^^ ^verdure clad against the velvet blue. 
 ly^C^ And what has done it ? Science may 
 explain the whole phenomena in two 
 or three sentences. But when all is 
 said, has anything been told? By 
 whatever process, through whatever 
 steps, by whatever agents, is it any- 
 thing we have seen but the vivid mani- 
 festation of creative force pulsating 
 through the planet, springing to light, 
 to blade and leaf and flower? In that 
 
warm, swift beating of vital flame on 
 flame does it not seem as though we 
 were about to surprise a direct and 
 visible intimation of personality and 
 were forever on the point of some new 
 and longed-for revelation of the divine 
 life? Force, say the philosophers, is 
 inherent in matter— the pristine demi- 
 urgic force. Yet what is force but the 
 divine impulse? Matter, they say 
 again, is only to be explained by spirit. 
 But perhaps an old book says it better, 
 "For with thee is the fountain of life." 
 And as we walk abroad in this glad 
 season, as we pause under the low- 
 hanging garlands of the apple orchard 
 among their clouds of white and pink, 
 and in a sudden ecstacy have our 
 heart go out to the bough that touches 
 us as if it were a sweet, live thing 
 breathing its delicious breath in our 
 face, and lift a hand half to caress it 
 
j^onr Wa^fi of €c09 
 
 before we think; as we stoop where 
 the dark blue violets seem to hold an- 
 other rendering of what the midnight 
 heavens partly reveal and partly hide ; 
 as we hear the brooks run ; and catch 
 the warble on the wing ; we feel this 
 fountain of life flowing through all 
 things, the very life of God Himself. 
 
 And if the trees of the Lord are full 
 of sap, are we ourselves less subject to 
 the heavenly influence ? Flammarion 
 has imagined that as in the thin at- 
 mosphere of Mars wings may have 
 got the start of the majestic world and 
 the intelligent being may be the wing- 
 ; ed being there, so in other worlds the 
 vegetable existence may be the con- 
 scious and intelligent existence. But 
 that is not the case here, at any rate, 
 and surely we must be as sentient of 
 the divine touch as the brown furrow 
 is, as the flowers escaping from it are 
 
— we who have escaped so much fur- 
 ther. The dust of the earth, the stock, 
 the stone, the stem, shall not feel this 
 great pulsation and the boon be denied 
 to us. 
 
 And is it not a fact that in every 
 healthy being there comes a feeling of 
 buoyancy with the spring, an added 
 sense of power, of the fullness of life, 
 an increase of purpose, that song 
 thrills along a stronger string for the 
 poet, that praise wells from the heart 
 of the worshipper, as at no other period 
 of the round year, that it is a time of ' 
 great beginnings? In winter the 
 whiteness of the world, the sparkle of 
 the stars, may lead the thought up- 
 ward ; but in the month of May, when ' 
 all else springs, the thought springs 
 higher and higher from nothing that 
 we see, from nothing we imagine, but 
 from a source beyond our understand- 
 
jFottr Hagg of CSfo^ 
 
 ing, from the unseen, the unknown, 
 the beloved, the fountain of life. It is 
 high tide, too, in us. We recognize in 
 the hope and the happiness of the hour 
 that the Lord of life is also the Lord 
 of love, and that love is throbbing 
 through the universe like its pulse. 
 
 Are we then unconsciously and in- 
 voluntarily nearer to God at one time 
 than another? That can hardly be. 
 Yet ^ve, ourselves, may be more per- 
 meable to influence, more sensible of 
 outer power, of indwelling spirit, in 
 the time of the rushing, breaking, bud- 
 ding life. We may then gain the in- 
 crement we use later. It is in the 
 spring that they scatter the rice abun- 
 dantly upon the full-flowing Nile, to 
 gather the harvest when the field has 
 emerged from the flood, having cast 
 their bread upon the waters to find it 
 after many days. 
 
jFotir W»ptt of &0^ 
 
 Surely there is no season when joy, 
 the "mere joy of being," so bubbles 
 over as now. And is the mere joy of 
 being a thing to be despised? Not 
 because being is the gift of God, but 
 because it is the immanence of God, 
 is God in us. For if touching the 
 Almighty we cannot find Him out, yet 
 we need not think it arrogance to feel 
 our Father's life our life also ; nor, so 
 long as "the sparrow hath found a 
 house, and the swallow a nest for her- 
 self where she may lay her young, 
 even thine altars," a profanity to 
 search, even though it be with simple 
 fancies, into the secret places, conject- 
 uring what that life so abundantly 
 given means. "There is a God in 
 Heaven that revealeth secrets," said 
 Belteshazzar ; but perhaps only to 
 those that seek for them. It may be 
 they are hidden that we shall seek. 
 
jFotir J9»p» of €Cr09 
 
 As the muscle grows that is exercised, 
 so does the soul that seeks into spir- 
 itual things. While we implore fel- 
 lowship we may forget servility. The 
 prophet who had very full and high 
 vision says that when he prostrated 
 himself abjectly the voice said, "Son 
 of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will 
 speak unto thee." 
 
 But it requires no more than a small 
 and limited vision to see the tremen- 
 dous revelation the spring always 
 makes, as if some splendid certainty 
 should compensate us for the unsolved 
 mystery otherwhere — not in any broad 
 lettering of written promise that the 
 soul should live forever, but in the 
 suggestions of all subtle analogy while 
 the earth rolls up out of shadow and 
 the year finds resurrection. From the 
 small seed hidden in the blackness of 
 death what white wonder of a flower 
 
^0nv 9»^» 0f &0^ 
 
 is this that has come tremulously into 
 the freer life of the outer air, bathed in 
 the sunshine of the vaulted heaven ? 
 It is not the flower of last year come 
 back again, but it is the individual of 
 the plant continued in a larger, love- 
 lier life, and it gives the dullest mind, 
 the darkest doubter, a hint of the sin- 
 gleness of the soul, a prophecy of the 
 reality of the risen spirit. "Art Thou 
 not from everlasting ?" sang he whom 
 it is said an angel bore from Judea 
 to Babylon on his Master's errand. 
 Surely he felt the pristine impulse of 
 Deity in him, carried over into eternity, 
 an immortal possession. "Art thou 
 not from everlasting, O Lord my God, 
 mine Holy One ? We shall not die V* 
 
Mv g>taft e^m BSeaut^ 
 

 IT is when summer pauses at her 
 height and the tides of life and 
 loveliness are brimmed that 
 one feels the whole earth is the 
 Lord's garden, and that surely as ever 
 he walks in his garden, in the cool of 
 the day. Instead of thinking the verse 
 a fable, one marvels the interpreta- 
 tion is not oftener found, and that not 
 only in the four-square plot of Eden 
 but everywhere about us, more ap- 
 parently in these summer days than 
 at other times and seasons, one may 
 look for the heavenly presence. "I 
 will take my rest, and I will consider 
 in my dwelling place like a clear heat 
 upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew 
 in the heat of harvest." 
 
 It is not only in the wonderful calm 
 
jFottr Wapi» of &0lf 
 
 and hush of the deep summer morn- 
 ing, when all the world perhaps still 
 sleeps, when grass and fences are 
 drenched with dew sparkling into gems 
 in the wind, when the morning star 
 has lost itself in clearer luster, and rose 
 and gold brighten into perfect light 
 full of a great lonely sweetness, that 
 one recognizes the being of him who [ 
 covers himself with light as with a 
 garment, and exclaims, "In thy light 
 shall we see light." But when the high 
 noon broods over the land with intense 
 heat, the strength of the creative power 
 broods with it, and a vivifying spirit of 
 life seems to fill the whole heaven and 
 rain down influence. 
 
 Not always may we receive this 
 
 largess. It must be that it is always 
 
 streaming down, but much depends 
 
 * upon our own receptivity. Absorbed 
 
jyonr m»p» of CrOi r 
 
 by care or work or grief, our dull ele- 
 ments fail to respond, too weak, per- 
 haps, to bear so great a flood. But 
 once surrendered and abandoned to 
 it, soaked through with this deific 
 warmth, then we 
 
 Become a living soul, 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things. 
 
 Against this splendor of azure and 
 sunshine steams up the miasma of 
 marsh and meadow and rolls along 
 the west, a majestic cloud with its huge 
 thunderheads, its luminous heights, 
 its cavernous bases. As squadrons 
 of lances dash into the dark mass of 
 the foe, the silvery fog rides in upon 
 the sudden wind from sea to meet it. 
 The cloud darts forth its javelins of 
 
 
 
iFonr Waps of C(o9 
 
 fire, the air is purple with ominous 
 gloom, the livid lake doubles all the 
 wild splendor, the thunder bowls from 
 hollow to hollow of the cloud, echoes 
 in far recesses of heaven and dies in 
 wild and awful music. The winds 
 pipe and the rains fall, and the battle 
 of the elements is on, in great purify- 
 ing process, burning and scathing its 
 way through the ranks of evil. "The 
 earth shook, the heavens also dropped 
 at the presence of God." There must 
 have been such a tempest among the 
 Judean hills when the singer broke 
 forth in the Ninety-third Psalm, which 
 tradition says was appointed to be 
 sung on the sixth day of the week, but 
 which should have been, at any rate, 
 the inspiration of some splendid thun- 
 der-storm rolling from peak to peak, 
 where Hermon kept the outpost, or 
 where Tabor waited for its glory. 
 
"Thy throne is established of old: thou 
 art from ever-lasting," he cries, over- 
 whelmed with the moment's sublimity. 
 "The floods have lifted up, O Lord, 
 the floods have lifted up their voice: 
 the floods lift up their waves," as the 
 peals roll away and the rustle and roar 
 of the rain re-echoes in the swelling 
 torrents. "The Lord on high is might- 
 ier than the noise of many waters." 
 It is might that sounds the keynote of 
 the scene, the might and majesty of 
 the old Hebrew days before it was 
 known that love casteth out fear. 
 How sweet is the air when the rain 
 goes sobbing away, the wind with- 
 draws to its deep-sea caves, the birds 
 shake off showers of song, from every- 
 where balms and balsams, long 
 breaths of perfume, wander about us, 
 the sun sheds his benediction out of 
 further depths ! So some great convul- 
 
jFotir W»pi$ of &0tf 
 
 sion of pain or sorrow leaves us on a 
 new earth under a new heaven. Now 
 with what imperceptibly swift, warm 
 touches the sunbeams fall upon us. 
 Can it be that these inconceivably 
 gentle throbs are the same electric 
 potency that so short time since moved 
 with a hemisphere of sound? Yet it is 
 the right hand that is glorious in 
 power that makes the bare rod bloom 
 blossoms and yield almonds. This 
 power has not such majesty and 
 might that it cannot turn to one with 
 love. 
 
 For out of the rain and up from the 
 gust with what elastic strength the 
 stem of the flower springs back and 
 sheds its airy dew ! As you glance at 
 it, with a thrill of surprise you have a 
 message from every spray, as if the 
 still small voice — the voice singing in 
 silence — spoke again after the whirl- 
 
wind and the thunder pass. You are 
 wretched, it may be, with a hopeless 
 depression; the world is so beautiful 
 and you must leave it, or one dearer to 
 you than your own being must go, — 
 and in death there is no remembrance. 
 To lose life, to lose personality, to lose 
 those you love, in their identity and the 
 potentiality of recognition! And, try- 
 ing to overthrow the doubt, you have 
 seemed to yourself so trivial, so un- 
 worthy- 'What is man that thou art 
 mindful of him?" What are you that 
 you should dare to think of commun- 
 ion with the highest, the vast of love- 
 liness and. power? And then a weed 
 that has come to blossoming unseen of 
 the gardener catches your eye. How^ 
 pure is its hue, what precision marks 
 its shape, what perfection of design in 
 its tiny cup! The gardener may de- 
 spise it, but the power that set the stars 
 
??t 
 
 jFowy SPa^gg of CrOtr 
 
 rolling ordained for its petal that curve 
 which might drop out of the lines of 
 intersecting orbits, melted those tints 
 together, and, since the flower was 
 first born, has never failed to mark 
 that petal with the two fine lines. And 
 shall he waste love so upon a weed 
 and have none left for you, aspiring, 
 longing, suffering soul? You pluck 
 the little flowering weed and look at 
 it. Can the utmost grace known to 
 art equal the purity of that line? 
 hat tissue made of man rivals the 
 delicacy of this leaf? What far-reach- 
 ing power is this that, through the dark 
 and mold, brings the pearly marvel to 
 life? What wisdom that never lets its 
 seed develop into any other flower, 
 that keeps its identity for it through 
 death and decay and bursting into new 
 life? And shall the weed have more 
 honor with that power than has the 
 
soul of man? "Are ye not much better 
 than they?" 
 
 The day declines; it is the enchant- 
 ing hour before sunset; the long shad- 
 ows are vivid as Dante's broken em- 
 eralds; the clarity of the air is like that 
 of the heart of a chrysolite; but it is 
 living, it is tender, as if there were a 
 caress in it; the air bathes one like the 
 warm waves of a soft sea. Going 
 down the greensward, under the dark 
 and ragged pines whose huge length 
 and bowery tops have wrestled with 
 a thousand storms, to the waterside, 
 where the river flows out of its bay of 
 myrtle green and gold and runs half 
 in the shadow of the opposite wood, 
 half in the lustrous sapphire and 
 amethyst of a wasp's wing, suddenly 
 the sense strikes you anew and more 
 completely that here at your hand the 
 Lord is walking in his garden in this 
 
Jfour Wap0 of €Ko9 
 
 cool of the day, not in dream or in 
 fantasy or applied interpretation of 
 the text, but in very truth. You are 
 sensible of the divine nearness, your 
 heart goes out in a throb of love and 
 adoration to the unknown being beside 
 you. And then "love betters what is 
 best"; you are made aware that beauty 
 can go no farther; that here is the ut- 
 most beauty can do; the hour, the 
 scene, the light, the loveliness — all 
 touch the outer edge of beauty beyond 
 which neither its own fact nor your 
 imagination canpass; that heaven itself 
 to visual sense or the soul's perception 
 can have no further beauty. Is it then 
 that our power of appreciation is to 
 be heightened in order to perceive a 
 greater beauty in the realms of the life 
 to come? Or is it that the uses of 
 beauty belong to this world alone; we 
 are to receive its fructifying and de- 
 
veloping enrichment here, and that, in 
 the life beyond, other things— things 
 undreamed of— replace it, and we 
 never have the same again ? Certain 
 it is that, to some, beauty is the reve- 
 lation of divine being; it feeds the 
 soul; it gives, as Wordsworth has 
 said, 
 
 A sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, 
 
 While Shelley, ethereal denier of the 
 ethereal, recognized in it 
 
 The mind which feeds this verse 
 Peopling the lone universe. 
 
j^onr l^ap» of €(09 
 
 Perhaps we have called ourselves 
 Pagans, refusing creeds, denying dog- 
 mas, one dogma only being ours ; that 
 such as this is beauty — the melting 
 jewels, the springing arch of the rain- 
 bow, the sunshine on billowy mea- 
 dows, silver slipping of showers, curv- 
 ing reaches of river, the clear, cold 
 moonlight on mid-ocean that swells 
 the heart to breaking, the blue of dis- 
 tance, the purple warmth of mountain- 
 sides, the long lines that carry the eye 
 into the remote and unfathomable, the 
 depth of azure in the horizon, where 
 all the blue of multitudinous seas has 
 crowded itself as this same day is 
 crowded with deity. And in the pro- 
 found of our being we feel the power 
 of this beauty : it has been our joy and 
 our consolation ; we have loved it, we 
 have worshipped it ; it overflows, we 
 see, with the spirit of the Lord, and, 
 
since "where the spirit of the Lord is 
 there is liberty," in such an hour as this 
 we find that all unconsciously we have 
 been loving and worshipping God. 
 Perhaps it is but a gleam of the smile 
 of his face we see, perhaps but the 
 skirt of his garment — our sight too 
 poor, our point of view too small for 
 more — but it is he! And it is they 
 who love beauty and use it with 
 merely sensual delight and to them- 
 selves alone, blind to its reach and 
 meaning, who commit the sin against 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
 The day may draw down to its cool 
 close with glowing west, with the 
 music of lowing kine and bells over 
 evening water, with puffs of perfume 
 on the breeze bringing memories of 
 we know not what, from we know 
 not where, of ineffable tenderness, 
 with a " sound of a going in the tops 
 
 "^N^ihr^ 
 
 --5^"!!T='j»».'«,^ 
 
jFottr liatgg of €Ro» 
 
 of the mulberry-trees," with that rich 
 dusk which seems every moment 
 about to open and let some splendor 
 out, — and still it is our good moment. 
 Another time we may be dull and blind 
 as the clod again, but now we find 
 ourselves skilled 
 
 To keep 
 Heights that the soul is competent to gain. 
 
 Still memory of the great sweet pres- 
 ence does not leave us, — though the 
 head be filled with dew and the locks 
 with the drops of the night. The red 
 half moon, riding low and near, a 
 friendly thing in the summer south, 
 slips down the dark curve of the wood 
 and disappears, its touch extinguished 
 in the tide below, and the solemn 
 heavens still glow and tingle with the 
 divine force pulsing through them. 
 For now in the height of summer is 
 
the very fullness of life, and till sleep 
 falls upon us we are satisfied with 
 consciousness of the fullness of him 
 
 that filleth all in all. 
 
an llpjermoA -3$ram|i 
 

 WHAT perfection of life 
 is this in the Indian 
 summer noon, with its 
 veiling vapors blue as 
 the bloom on the plum, that seem al- 
 ways about to lift from some skyey 
 mystery, with the sunshine itself mel- 
 lowed through all the purple tracery 
 of stem and spray in slender tangle 
 and drooping curve, with the country- 
 side still stained in color, with the soft, 
 slow wind streaming from indolent 
 tropics of balm as if born in the 
 Islands of the Blest, the wind which 
 blows from the chambers of the south ! 
 But just now it was so different. 
 
^0uv IBupi^ of &0tf 
 
 How dreary was the day, how im- 
 possible it was to send the thought 
 beyond the gray and lowering sky, 
 how unfriendly seemed all nature, 
 what depression in the chill air and 
 grim outlook, how sinister the night- 
 fall ! The wind whistled with storm 
 upon its wings, it roared in the tree- 
 tops, and sent the rote of the sea up 
 like a thrilling note of despair. In 
 the summer storm, when we are 
 young and strong, we rise on it with 
 exultant spirit, but if the years have 
 laid heavy hand upon us, and whether 
 they have or not, the autumn storm 
 makes us aware of our defenseless- 
 hess and gives us a strange despon- 
 dency. How altogether vain we felt 
 ourselves when out in the growing 
 gale — straws driven before it scarcely 
 more helpless ! Fierce texts ran 
 through our thoughts, "He hath bent 
 
his bow like an enemy." We saw, as 
 twilight gathered, the earth without 
 form and void, and when the wind 
 mounted with wild screams we said, 
 " He shall come up as clouds, and his 
 chariots shall be as a whirlwind, his 
 horses are swifter than eagles. Wo 
 unto us ! " And in the night, as the 
 house trembled, we thought of sailors 
 driving on the coast, and we slept 
 only by fits and starts and woke sur- 
 prised, ashamed and full of as unreas- 
 onable joy to find the skies blue, the 
 winds laid and the sunshine pouring 
 in showers. "Weeping may endure 
 for a night, but joy cometh in the 
 morning." As we look out and search 
 what the Ptolemaists called the sap- 
 phire-crystalline, we understand some- 
 thing of the feeling the singer of the 
 psalm of most wild melancholy and 
 ardent imploration had. " Sing this," 
 
jfonr 2lAS!6i of CrOir 
 
 he said, " to the tune of the Hind of 
 Dawn." 
 
 Come out then, this bright fall day 
 into the nearer and thinner woods, the 
 green moss underfoot overlaid with 
 floating gold, the canopy above alive 
 and gay with flickering points of light. 
 Though it be noonday, the raindrops 
 glitter on leaf and brier with the re- 
 flection of still purple ash and golden 
 beech and scarlet maple, ruby and 
 topaz and amethyst and beryl, — the 
 treasure house the king built "for 
 silver and for gold, and for precious 
 stones, and for spices and for shields, 
 and for all manner of pleasant jewels" 
 not so splendid as this bit of boscage 
 of which the sun and wind are treas- 
 urers, and where none can turn the 
 key upon us. " O thou afflicted, tossed 
 with tempest and not comforted, be- 
 hold I will lay thy stones with fair 
 
colors and lay thy foundations with 
 sapphires. And I will make thy win- 
 dows of agates, and thy gates of 
 carbuncles, and all thy borders of 
 pleasant stones." Was it not well to 
 have the gloom for the sake of the 
 glory, the storm for the sake of the 
 vast woodland peace ? " Awake, O 
 north wind; and come thou south; 
 blow upon my garden, that the spices 
 thereof may flow out ! " 
 
 What wonder is this that flutters 
 into our hands — painted in all fine 
 blending of tint, color-discords re- 
 solved into harmonies in an inch of 
 space — what delicate design, what 
 artistry is it, to have been done by the 
 same mighty forces that roll the stars; 
 the sunbeam, swinging a planet on 
 its tip, moving lightly as a pencil that 
 drips with color here? Long ago, 
 concerning the work of his hands, one 
 
jFottr aiggiSi of €Ko» 
 
 said, " I will also glorify them and 
 they shall not be small." As the light 
 
 < sketches some prodigal artist tosses 
 into the waste-basket are taken out 
 by the peasant people with whom he 
 stayed, and pinned against the wall, 
 so, when we presently go back to 
 play our part again in the life of the 
 town — " thou that art full of stirs, a 
 tumultuous city, a joyous city " — we 
 will take this leaf and others with us 
 
 ^to lay perhaps in the book we read, 
 
 To mark great places with due gratitude. 
 
 As we stand here and watch leaf 
 after leaf drifting down, the thought 
 has more than once assailed us that 
 the race like the tree survives, but we 
 like the leaf fall and are lost. We all 
 do fade as a leaf, we sadly murmur. 
 But as we look at this ripe thing lying 
 
on our palm, we also ripen as a leaf, 
 we say, and drop at last in the death 
 which is only another form of life, 
 which is only new life set free. It is 
 out of this setting free of new life, this 
 change of the leaves from their sub- 
 stance, that the warmth let loose gives 
 us this sweet Indian summer weather 
 in which we walk abroad and fancy 
 the day — with its pearly dawning, its 
 rich noon life, its spicy afternoon fra- 
 grances, its early hazes that stretch an 
 aerial barrier between us and the com- 
 mon place and island us in the ideal — 
 is a day, not lost out of June, but hint- 
 ing of a season lovelier yet than June, 
 as if from the great body of death on 
 earth were evolved the climate of the 
 heavenly parallels. We all do fade 
 as a leaf, but why not also as a flower ? 
 And should there be sadness in the 
 fading of the flower when in the 
 
^ont l^ap» of Cf0Xf 
 
 act of fading it leaves its seed, not its 
 son, not its heir, but the concentration 
 and essence of itself, the thing that 
 shall return a rose and not a lily, a 
 lily and not a violet, its principle of 
 life, its perpetuity, its identity? "The 
 flower fadeth because the spirit of the 
 Lord bloweth upon it." And the spirit 
 of the Lord is the spirit of life. 
 
 But hark ! We heard a little while 
 ago as we stood, the honk of the wild 
 geese flying over, distance softening 
 their cry to a wilder, sweeter music 
 than that of the huntsman's horn. 
 And now what is this sudden rush and 
 flutter of lesser wings? Look out 
 over the open. What a whirlwind of 
 flickering lines rises from the reeds of 
 the wide marshes, what a myriad of 
 winnowing wings, what life, what 
 motion, what swinging together, what 
 fanning apart, what a cloud of sparks 
 
and shadows, darkening the sky for a 
 moment, now go soaring away into 
 the sun ! " A bird of the air shall carry 
 the voice, and that which hath wings 
 shall tell the matter." O birds flying 
 south, what stirs you, what conducts 
 you ? How do you know, fledglings 
 of a year, what happy fields may lie 
 beyond ? Into what skies do you pen- 
 etrate; what life awaits you there? 
 What hope, what buoyant certainty 
 leads you along your path into heaven 
 beyond heaven, and welcoming fields 
 at last ? St. Francis of Assisi called 
 you " My brothers, the birds." How 
 much more confidence in the hand 
 that leads you have you than we who 
 are not saints and do not often pause 
 to call you our brothers ! It is not you 
 who are of little faith. 
 
 Even the flowers, the leaves, push- 
 ing forth into another climate, have 
 
iFotir JP«g» of CKoli 
 
 more confidence than we. After all, 
 may it be that the possibility of faith 
 is a distinct faculty, and its habit, like 
 that of any other faculty, is a thing to 
 be cultivated, to be nourished, to be 
 strengthened, not stimulated and fed 
 into the overgrowth oif superstition, 
 but cared for and protected till strong 
 and fine it reaches clear sunlight? 
 Can it be that it is in its beginning 
 purveyor of the food that feeds the 
 very seed of the soul ? 
 
 The afternoon wanes, the moon 
 swims up clad in golden mists — the 
 cold hunter's moon that has lasted 
 over into the November days. It is 
 but a little while since the harvest 
 moon held the heavens, casting the 
 blackness of the great trees, the trem- 
 ulous shadows of the upper boughs, 
 into dusky aisles of dreamland, filled 
 with " the precious things put forth by 
 
Diwwk'jvtsinnnMQMraRiakMtataiiTtw^^ 
 
 the moon" — the warm and mellow 
 moon, flooding- the hollpw of the sky 
 with wonderlight, hanging overhead 
 like some great brooding moiher-bird, 
 as if 
 
 An slbatropiS asleep, 
 Balanced on her wings of light, 
 i Hovered in the purple night 
 
 But now this colder, whiter moon sails 
 up the sky, drawing a woven veil of 
 mists up with her from river and wood 
 and field. All the world grows dim 
 and weird and sad again. There is ho 
 tree, there is no rock ; we are shut off, 
 lost and alone in sjpace; and all the 
 sparkle of the fire upon the hearth, 
 the warmth of dear human smiles and 
 glances, the sound of singing and 
 laughing voices cannot quite banish 
 the spectre of the white gloom outside. 
 Yet when, hours afterward, we look 
 out from the window of our upper 
 
■gfottr giapgg of CrO^ir 
 
 chamber, the mist has risen like the 
 tide of a v/hite sea and overtopped 
 the breathing world, but far above in 
 the clear transparence of depths of 
 midnight blue moves the "faithful wit- 
 ness in heaven," splendid as an arch- 
 angel's shield made of one jewel, an 
 impersonate force of nature always 
 pursuing its way above mists and 
 darkness, serene and strong, with the 
 poet's white fire laden indeed, but 
 laden also with the promise of " abun- 
 dance of peace so long as the moon 
 endureth." 
 
 And as we lift our eyes, and our 
 soul seems interpenetrated with the 
 glory of the upper and outer night, we 
 almost seem ourselves to see the city 
 that had "no need of the sun, neither 
 of the moon to shine in it." 
 
fixm tjje ^ixiQ, g>at in 
 tje Winter House 
 
^at In t^r 
 
 WHY should one un- 
 lessoned in creeds, 
 who looks on the chill 
 repose of death believe 
 in continued life? Why should one 
 bending over the loathly worm believe 
 in the winged fly? And why should 
 one in the power of the wintry world, 
 when the cold earth seems dead as the 
 dead shape lately hidden by its clods, 
 take courage for a future? Yet courage 
 merely means reliance upon power, 
 power to overcome, power to endure, 
 power to love and to be loved. And 
 is not true reliance based, consciously 
 or otherwise, upon the evidence of 
 things not seen, upon assurance of 
 
jFour Wap» of €r09 
 
 never failing fonts of strength, assur- 
 ance that God lives in his world? 
 
 The Buddha, it is told, once met a 
 man who, being born blind, had no 
 conception of color. "Light?" he said, 
 "Color? Radiant surfaces ? It is all 
 a dream. The rose has shape — I feel 
 it. It has perfume, — I perceive it. 
 But the tint of which you speak, — it 
 is a superstition, an illusion!" The 
 god went on his way. "Remain," he 
 said, "in darkness, till you need light. 
 Had you received hospitably the 
 notion of something transcending 
 your own powers, a new world had 
 opened to you, and in the effort to 
 bridge the space between you and that 
 world wings would have grown on 
 your soul!" 
 
 But see, through the chill air this 
 wintry morning a fine frozen mist de- 
 scends, a web of woven silver when a 
 
ff0nv Wap» of cs^oir 
 
 slant light touches it, hiding river and 
 shore and field as much as if one were 
 lost in some frozen nebula of the inter- 
 stellar cold, could such thing be; and 
 the thought comes involuntarily 
 whether, were one wandering in the 
 lonely spaces of realms unknown to 
 this, would one then be less conscious, 
 less observant, less a being still? A 
 wind comes parting the veil of frozen 
 gossamer and shredding it to ragged 
 vapor— He bringeth the wind out of 
 his treasuries,— the sun bursts through 
 and changes it to airy gold; there float 
 up the river shores, all violet and tend- 
 er fawns; there gloom the dark pines; 
 carrying on its tide of fluent sapphire 
 the snow-crusted glitter of its broken 
 ice floes, sweeps the river far away in- 
 to the rosy reaches of the east; and two 
 great eagles come sailing down the 
 wind. Surely if beauty be not the 
 
jl^otir IPa^si of $Kfo9 
 
 being of God himself, but is only the 
 skirt of his garment, the Lord is pass- 
 ing down this way ! 
 
 Nor is it all — this morning beauty — 
 in the larger forces of the great tide, 
 the solemn wood. See the frosty rime 
 sparkling upon the parapet of the 
 bridge, each crystal set in wrought- 
 work of spun silver — And the hoary 
 frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? 
 See where on every bough and spray 
 the settling, freezing vapor has caught 
 the sun and has become a spark of 
 fire, and the air is atoss with live rub- 
 ies and emeralds and topazes — He 
 hath entered into the treasures of his 
 snow — and the whole cold, dead world 
 is glancing and quivering with life, 
 while the shadow of every drift, the 
 color in the heart of every rift of the 
 ice, is the very blue of heaven. 
 
 But just beyond us the wood looms 
 
again. Here at the entrance the wind 
 sings over the tree-tops like a career- 
 ing spirit, but going farther all sound 
 ceases. Save for the rare lifting of an 
 iron bough the falling of a weight of 
 snow, all seems the silence of death. 
 But is it so? What streak of light 
 w^as that darted up the tree bole with 
 the chipmunk ? Here is the print on 
 the snow, one foot before the other in 
 a single line, where the wary mink 
 has passed; and how soft was this fluff 
 of feathers that blundered with the 
 startled owl across our faces! Down 
 in the cedar swamp a flock of finches 
 and jays and robins chuckle over the 
 blue juniper berries; here the black 
 and white woodpeckers swarm all 
 about the boughs, clinging to the un- 
 der side of the stems and quarrying for 
 the hidden store within. But they are 
 here as we are, animate beings, making 
 
the best of things. Listen, then — that 
 tinkle, airy, remote, like a crystal bell 
 in a dream — it is drop by drop of the 
 living water of the little rivulet and it 
 falls beneath the ice; and wherever it 
 flows the chemic power of the life of 
 the great planet flows with it — 
 
 Put like fire from off thy finger. 
 
 Here a dead leaf floats by us; its 
 work is done, but something pushed it 
 from its place, the thrill within the new 
 bud there. The breath of the wind 
 steals in now over this open glade and 
 rifles the silky milkweed pod of its 
 seeds, seeds where the life lies sus- 
 pended, as it may sleep in the Orient- 
 al mage who has himself buried in the 
 earth for a month or a year to be 
 taken back some day to life and light 
 again. Here is a chrysalis glued to a 
 stem; it holds in its long sleep not the 
 
 -.-^x^/^ 
 
jF^ur l^as» 0f'Cs^o9 
 
 developing creature, but the folded, 
 finished thing absorbing what it needs 
 of the old body as the soul absorbs 
 the issues of this life. See how vivid 
 with their crimsonjuices are the stems 
 of the wild roses, as we come out 
 again ; down there at the foot of the 
 field, where a flight of crows go caw- ] 
 ing and flapping home, the willow | 
 boughs are like green and golden 
 flames. A cold and dead and frozen j 
 world? No, it is full of warmth and ' 
 cheer and motion. The principle of. 
 life is never absent from it ; even were ' 
 it slumbering it is there, ready to wake. ' 
 Everywhere throughout the apparent '/^^ 
 dark and cold is warmth and light — ^ 
 if we seek it. Everywhere, the vision 
 growing strong and clear in the out- 
 look, is the Creator and Preserver to 
 be found. 
 
 But the wind comes from the sea ; 
 
 >9 
 
the storm blows up and the snow falls. 
 Each flake gives the cheek a soft and 
 cool caress and its crystal passes in 
 beauty on the hand. Its dance ' 
 mimics and outdoes the dance of the 
 swarming gnats, while it hangs 
 wreaths of immaterial bloom upon the 
 loftier boughs, and spreads a downy 
 coverlid upon the little roots of the 
 grass beneath. And if the gale grow 
 to tempest it is with the triumphant 
 sensation of overcoming evil that we 
 t^breast it and defy it. How white and 
 purified is the earth then at last ! How 
 spiritual its aspect and horizon! 
 s'^What a winged thing it seems ! And 
 we spread our wings with it. As we 
 walk home some night when such 
 a storm has blown away, tired, per- 
 haps, and chilled, it may be depressed 
 ith care and full of gloom, even 
 doubting all things, how the last still 
 
jFonr 1^9pi$ of @(o9 
 
 glow of the receding sunset, with its 
 clarity of rich pomegranate tint, draw- 
 ing away over the snowy fields and 
 their violet shadows, pictures a glow- 
 ing hearth, invites us like the blaze of 
 a father's fireside, gives us a sense of 
 warmth and joy and cheer, as if we 
 heard a welcoming voice calling us 
 home, assuring us of love and peace. 
 And, as long levels of sea and meadow 
 and vast mountain forms and receding 
 skies affect us like the contemplation 
 of infinity, so when, a shining jewel 
 in the midst of a clear glow, the 
 evening star looks out from illimitable 
 distances we know the welcoming 
 voice was the voice of infinite things. 
 But now all the stars are out, Arc- 
 turus with his sons and the bands of 
 Orion. No summer skies are ever 
 stripped so bare of even a breath. 
 The great planets fly like lampads 
 
j^onr ^ap» of &0tf 
 
 JiGitf 
 
 running with their torches. There is 
 no film between us. The farther stars 
 hang out of heaven like living spirits. 
 How near they are, how we seem a 
 part of them, to be going on with them, 
 how they swing down towards us out 
 of the Milky Way, the Path of Souls 
 up which our imagination travels to- 
 wards universes beyond and yet be- 
 yond and comes out upon the far sup- 
 ernal light, while the wind sings by us 
 as if it knew the way ! 
 
 In their slow wheel, their measured 
 distance, their solemn lustre, we see 
 groups of worlds obeying law, ac- 
 knowledging the necessity of rule, the 
 loveliness of order. And the song 
 they sing together seems to be a 
 mighty declaration that law must be 
 the expression of will, that there can 
 be no will except that of a personality, 
 that this Personality — Suddenly we 
 
jFowr aPa^iS of €r09 
 
 have come close upon God. Yet not 
 to tremble. For although this chief 
 and first of beings must have the chief 
 and first of qualities, and although up- 
 ward and downward gaze alike give 
 us to see the power ; we are left to dis- 
 cover for ourselves that greater than 
 power is love. Life of the germ that 
 all the unfigured cold of outer aether 
 cannot destroy wakes into beautiful 
 growth at a touch of the sun. What 
 more shall we ask for the Divine than 
 Love and Power ? 
 
 And now the constellations grow 
 paler and the moon sends a glory be- 
 hind her as she floats up, up, up — 
 so low she rode in summer, so high 
 she rides tonight! In the middle of 
 the highest sky she spreads her wings, 
 while far, far off and faint the lumin- 
 ous nebulae still hang like the reflec- 
 tion of distant palace lights. What 
 
jrontr mapii <»f es^oir 
 
 broad lusters, what sharp shadows on 
 the snow, what reflection into heaven, 
 what height, what depth, what bend- 
 ing of the infinite spaces, what tender- 
 ness in the midnight blue, what sense of 
 divine presence ! For exalted and en- 
 larged to all the limit of our vision on 
 this winter night we see the sky is full 
 of God ! 
 
JUL 13 »90^