FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138  
139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   >>  
dance,' and 'the bush with frizzled hair.' For the bush form is essentially one taken by vegetation in some kind of distress; scorched by heat, discouraged by darkness, or bitten by frost; it is the form in which isolated knots of earnest plant life stay {210} the flux of fiery sands, bind the rents of tottering crags, purge the stagnant air of cave or chasm, and fringe with sudden hues of unhoped spring the Arctic edge of retreating desolation. On the other hand, the trees which, as in sacred dance, make the borders of the rivers glad with their procession, and the mountain ridges statelier with their pride, are all expressions of the vegetative power in its accomplished felicities; gathering themselves into graceful companionship with the fairest arts and serenest life of man; and providing not only the sustenance and the instruments, but also the lessons and the delights, of that life, in perfectness of order, and unblighted fruition of season and time. 9. 'Interitura'--yet these not to-day, nor to-morrow, nor with the decline of the summer's sun. We describe a plant as small or great; and think we have given account enough of its nature and being. But the chief question for the plant, as for the human creature, is the Number of its days; for to the tree, as to its master, the words are forever true--"As thy Day is, so shall thy Strength be." 10. I am astonished hourly, more and more, at the apathy and stupidity which have prevented me hitherto from learning the most simple facts at the base of this question! Here is this myrtille bush in my hand--its cluster of some fifteen or twenty delicate green branches knitting themselves downwards into the stubborn brown {211} of a stem on which my knife makes little impression. I have not the slightest idea how old it is, still less how old it might one day have been if I had not gathered it; and, less than the least, what hinders it from becoming as old as it likes! What doom is there over these bright green sprays, that they may never win to any height or space of verdure, nor persist beyond their narrow scope of years? 11. And the more I think the more I bewilder myself; for these bushes, which are pruned and clipped by the deathless Gardener into these lowly thickets of bloom, do not strew the ground with fallen branches and faded clippings in any wise,--it is the pining umbrage of the patriarchal trees that tinges the ground and betrays the foot beneath them: but,
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138  
139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   >>  



Top keywords:
branches
 

ground

 

question

 

astonished

 

Strength

 
impression
 
slightest
 

knitting

 
myrtille
 

hitherto


cluster

 

simple

 
learning
 

prevented

 
hourly
 

delicate

 
apathy
 
fifteen
 

stupidity

 

twenty


stubborn

 

Gardener

 

deathless

 

thickets

 

clipped

 

pruned

 

bewilder

 

bushes

 

betrays

 

tinges


beneath

 
patriarchal
 

umbrage

 

fallen

 

clippings

 
pining
 

hinders

 
gathered
 

verdure

 
persist

narrow
 

height

 
sprays
 
bright
 

desolation

 

sacred

 
retreating
 

sudden

 
unhoped
 

spring