October Vagabonds | Page 2

I had betaken myself. After a brief sojourn there, drinking of the waters, and building up on the strong diet of the sage's living words, he had given me the key to some green woods and streams of his, and bade me take them for my hermitage. I had a great making-up to arrange with Nature, and I half wondered how she would receive me after all this long time. But when did that mother ever turn her face from her child, however truant from her care? It had been with a beating heart that I had passed up the hillside on an evening in early June, and approached the hushed green temple, wherein I was to take Summer sanctuary from a wicked world.
But if, as I hope, the reader has no objection to an occasional interlude of verse in all this prose, I will copy for him here the poem I wrote next morning--it being always easier to tell the strict truth in poetry rather than in prose:
At evening I came to the wood, and threw myself on the breast Of the great green mother, weeping, and the arms of a thousand trees Waved and rustled in welcome, and murmured: "Rest--rest--rest! The leaves, thy brothers, shall heal thee; thy sisters, the flowers, bring peace."
At length I stayed from my weeping, and lifted my face from the grass; The moon was walking the wood with feet of mysterious pearl, And the great trees held their breath, trance-like, watching her pass, And a bird called out from the shadows, with voice as sweet as a girl.
And then, in the holy silence, to the great green mother I prayed: "Take me again to thy bosom, thy son who so close to thee, Aforetime, filial clung, then into the city strayed-- The painted face of the town, the wine and the harlotry.
"Bathe me in lustral dawns, and the morning star and the dew. Make pure my heart as a bird and innocent as a flower, Make sweet my thoughts as the meadow-mint --O make me all anew, And in the strength of beech and oak gird up my will with power.
"I have wandered far, O my mother, but here I return at the last, Never again to stray in pilgrimage wanton and wild; A broken heart and a contrite here at thy feet I cast, O take me back to thy bosom ..." And the mother answered, "Child!"
It was a wonderful reconciliation, a wonderful home-coming, and how I luxuriated in the great green forgiveness! Yes! the giant maples had forgiven me, and the multitudinous beeches had taken me to their arms. The flowers and I were friends again, the grass was my brother, and the shy nymph-like stream, dropping silver vowels into the silence, was my sweetheart.
CHAPTER III
"TRESPASSERS WILL BE..."
For those who value it, there is no form of property that inspires a sense of ownership so jealous as solitude. Rob my orchard if you will, but beware how you despoil me of my silence. The average noisy person can have no conception what a brutal form of trespass his coarsely cheerful voice may be in the exquisite spiritual hush of the woods, or what shattering discomfort his irrelevant presence in the landscape.
One day, to my horror, a picnic ruthlessly invaded my sanctuary. With a roar of Boeotian hilarity, it tore up the hillside as if it were a storming party, and half a day the sacred woods were vocal with silly catcalls and snatches of profane song. I locked up my hermitage, and, taking my stick, sought refuge in flight, like the other woodland creatures; only coming back at evening with cautious step and peering glance, half afraid lest it should still be there. No! It was gone, but its voices seemed to have left gaping wounds across the violated air, and the trees to wear a look of desecration. But presently the moon arose and washed the solitude clean again, and the wounds of silence were healed in the still night.
Next morning I amused myself by writing the following notice, which I nailed up on a great elm-tree standing guard at the beginning of the woods:
SILENCE!
Speaking above a whisper in these woods is forbidden by law.
This notice seems to have had its effect, for from this time on no more hands of marauders invaded my peace. But I had one other case of trespass, of which it is now time to speak.
Some short distance from the shack was a clearing in the woods, a thriving wilderness of bramble-bushes, poke-berries, myrtle-berries, mandrakes, milkweed, mullein, daisies and what not--a paradise of every sauntering vine and splendid, saucy weed. In the centre stood a sycamore-tree, beneath which it was my custom to smoke a morning pipe and revolve my profound after-breakfast thoughts.
Judge, then, of