Under the Trees and Elsewhere | Page 4

beauty, overflowing in frolic
loveliness. This shall be to you a day out of eternity, a moment out of
the immortal youth to which all true life comes at last, and in which it
abides."
I cannot say that I heard these words, and yet they were as real to me as
if they had been audible; in all fellowship with Nature silence is deeper
and more real than speech. As I stood meditating on these deep things
that lie at the bottom of this sea of bloom, I understood why men in all
ages have connected the flowering of the apple with their dreams of
paradise; I saw at a glance the immortal symbolism of these
blossoming fields and hillsides. I did not need to lift my eyes to look
upon that garden of Hesperides, lying like a dream of heaven under the
golden western skies, whence Heracles brought back the fruit of Juno; I
asked no aid of Milton's imagination to see the mighty hero in
. . . the gardens fair Of Hesperus and his daughters three, That sing
about the golden tree;
and as I gazed, the vision of that other and nobler hero came before me,
whose purity is more to us than his prowess, and who waits in Avilion,
the "Isle of Apples," for the call that shall summon him back from
Paradise.
I am going a long way With these thou seest--if indeed I go (For all my
mind is clouded with a doubt)-- To the island-valley of Avilion; Where

falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor even wind blows loudly; but it
lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery
hollows crown'd with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my
grievous wound.
Chapter III
Along the Road
I
Since I turned the key on my study I have almost forgotten the familiar
titles on which my eye rested whenever I took a survey of my
book-shelves. Those friends stanch and true, with whom I have held
such royal fellowship when skies were chill and winds were cold, will
not forget me, nor shall I become unfaithful to them. I have gone
abroad that I may return later with renewed zest and deeper insight to
my old companionships. Books and nature are never inimical; they
mutually speak for and interpret each other; and only he who stands
where their double light falls sees things in true perspective and in right
relations.
The road along whose winding course I have been making a delightful
pilgrimage to-day has the double charm of natural beauty and of human
association; it is old, as age is reckoned in this new world; it has grown
hard under the tread of sleeping generations, and the great figures of
history have passed over it in their journeys between the two great
cities which mark its limits. In the earlier days it was the king's
highway, and along its up-hill and down-dale course the battalions of
royal troops marched and counter-marched to the call of bugles that
have gone silent these hundred years and more. It is a road of varied
fortunes, like many of those who have passed over it; it is sometimes
rich in all manner of priceless possessions, and again it is barren,
poverty-stricken, and desolate. It climbs long hills, sometimes in a
roundabout, hesitating, half-hearted way, and sometimes with an abrupt
and breathless ascent; at the summit it seems to pause a moment as if to
invite the traveller to survey the splendid domain which it commands.

On one side, in such a restful moment, one sees the wide circle of
waters, stretching far off to a horizon which rests on clusters of islands
and marks the limits of the world; in the foreground, and sweeping
around the other points of the compass, a landscape rich in foliage, full
of gentle undulations, and dotted here and there with fallow fields,
spreads itself like another sea that has been hushed into sudden
immutability, and then sown, every wave and swell of it, with the seeds
of exhaustless fertility.
From such points of eminence as these the road sometimes runs with
hurried descent, as if longing for solitude, into the heart of the
woodlands, and there winds slowly and solemnly under the
overshadowing branches; there are no fences here, and the sharp lines
of separation between road-bed and forest were long ago erased in that
quiet usurpation of man's work, which Nature never fails to make the
moment she is left to herself. The ancient spell of the woods is
unbroken in this leafy solitude, and no traveller in whom imagination
survives can hope to escape it. The deep breathings of primeval life are
almost audible, and one feels in a quick and subtle perception the