nding one's self thus unwelcomed and uncared for, and in
the first moment of disappointment an unspoken accusation of change and
coldness lies in the heart. The change is not in Nature, however; it
is in ourselves. "The world is too much with us." Not until its
strife and tumult fade into distance and memory will those finer
senses, dulled by contact with a meaner life, restore that which we
have lost. After a little some such thought as this comes to us, and
day after day we haunt the silent streams and the secret places of the
forest; waiting, watching, unconsciously bringing ourselves once more
into harmony with the great, rich world around us, we forget the tumult
out of which we have come, a deep peace possesses us, and in its
unbroken quietness the old sights and sounds return again. Youth,
faith, hope, and love spring again out of a soil which had begun to
deny them sustenance; old dreams mingle with our waking hours; the
old-time channels of joy, long silent and bare, overflow with streams
that restore a lost world of beauty in our souls. We have come back to
Nature, and she has not denied us, in spite of our disloyalty.

I know of nothing more full of deep delight than this return of the old
companionship, this restoration of the old intimacy. How much there is
to recall, how many confidences there are to be exchanged! The days
are not long enough for all we would say and hear. Such hours come in
the pine woods; hours so full of the strange silence of the place, so
unbroken by customary habits and thoughts, that no dial could divide
into fragments a day that was one long unbroken spell of wonder and
delight. So remote seemed all human life that even memory turned from
it and lost herself in silent meditation; so vast and mysterious was
the life of Nature that the past and the future seemed part of the
changeless present. The light fell soft and dim through the thickly
woven branches and among the densely clustered trunks; underneath, the
deep masses of pine needles and the rich moss spread a carpet on which
the heaviest footfall left the silence unbroken. It was a place of
dreams and mysteries.

Heed the old oracles,
Ponder my spells;
Song wakes in my pinnacles
When the wind swells.
Soundeth the prophetic wind,
The shadows shake on the rock behind,
And the countless leaves of the pine are strings
Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings.
Hearken! hearken!
If thou wouldst