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Minstrel Weather - Marian Storm · Selected Essays of Michel de Montaigne

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  Speaker 1: Chapters one, two, and three of menstrul Weather. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by David Wales menstrul Weather by Marian Storm, Chapter one,
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  Speaker 1: Faces of Janus. Though January has days that dress in
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  Speaker 1: saffron for their going and noons of yellow light for
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  Speaker 1: telling crocuses, the month is yet not altogether friendly. The
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  Speaker 1: year is moving now toward its most unpitying season. Nights
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  Speaker 1: that came on kindly may turn the meadows to iron,
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  Speaker 1: tear off the last faithful leaves from oaks, drive thick
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  Speaker 1: clouds across the moon to end, and a violent dawn.
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  Speaker 1: January holds gentle weather in one hand and blizzards in
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  Speaker 1: the other. And what a blizzard can be only dwellers
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  Speaker 1: on prairies or among the mountains, no snow gone mad
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  Speaker 1: its legions rushing across the land with daggers drawn, furious,
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  Speaker 1: bearing no malice but certainly no compassion, and overwhelming all
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  Speaker 1: creatures abroad, bewildered flocks, birds have frozen on their twigs,
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  Speaker 1: Cattle unwisely left on shelterless ranges, and people who lose
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  Speaker 1: the way long before animals give up. Snow hardly seems
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  Speaker 1: made of fairy stars and flowers. When its full terror
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  Speaker 1: sweeps northern valleys or the interminable solitudes of the plains.
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  Speaker 1: The gale, so armed for attack, owns something of the
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  Speaker 1: wicked intention which Conrad says that sailors often perceive. In
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  Speaker 1: a storm at sea. The rider pursued by a blizzard
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  Speaker 1: may feel, like the tossed mariner, that these elemental forces
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  Speaker 1: are coming at him with a purpose, with an unbridled cruelty,
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  Speaker 1: which means to sweep the whole precious world away by
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  Speaker 1: the simple and appalling act of taking his life. We
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  Speaker 1: do not smile at the pathetic fallacy when we are
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  Speaker 1: alone with cold. The overtaken mountaineer understands it means to
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  Speaker 1: get him. These things happen in places where weather is
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  Speaker 1: not obedient to wraps and furnaces, but where it must
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  Speaker 1: be fought hand to hand, and where the pretty snow
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  Speaker 1: tangles its victim's feet and slowly puts him to sleep
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  Speaker 1: in a delicious dream of warmth. Tropical lightning has not
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  Speaker 1: the calm omnipotence of cold when it walks lonely ways.
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  Speaker 1: January knows days on which the haze of spring and
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  Speaker 1: the dim tenderness of the sunshine tempt the rabbit to
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  Speaker 1: try another nap al fresco, indiscreet though he knows it
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  Speaker 1: to be, even the woodchuck must turn over and sniff
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  Speaker 1: in his sleep as the thaw creeps downward, and the
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  Speaker 1: muskrat takes his safe way by water once more. While
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  Speaker 1: the steel trap waits on the bank to be sprung
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  Speaker 1: humanely by a fall in cone, the light red fox
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  Speaker 1: glides across the upper pastures and weaves among the hard hack, unchallenged,
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  Speaker 1: for this is not hunting weather. A fleeting respite comes
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  Speaker 1: to the tormented mink toward the last of the month,
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  Speaker 1: in ascent of the February and March to come. Pussy willows,
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  Speaker 1: ingenuously deceived by the brief mildness, come out inquisitively and
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  Speaker 1: stand in expectation beside the brook. Convinced that this ice
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  Speaker 1: is only left over. What can have delayed? The garnet
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  Speaker 1: bade skunk's cabbage always on hand the first of all.
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  Speaker 1: So many willows are needed by the florist that perhaps
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  Speaker 1: they do not pay heavily for their premature debut, but
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  Speaker 1: they are all gray now. In March they show a
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  Speaker 1: cloudy crimson and yellow, not alone of the final blossom,
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  Speaker 1: but of their fur. There are plenty of scarlet rose
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  Speaker 1: hips and uplifted clusters for the birds, somehow neglect them
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  Speaker 1: while they pursue other delicacies of the same color and contour.
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  Speaker 1: Nature has probably told the winter chippies that rose hips
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  Speaker 1: are no good. Spring decorations must not be pilfered by
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  Speaker 1: the snow sprites. Puff balls have broken off from old logs,
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  Speaker 1: and in walking through low woods you may step on
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  Speaker 1: one here and there, awakening the fancy that the world
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  Speaker 1: is burning under its sad cloak of Sepia leaves, and
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  Speaker 1: sending up small puffs of smoke to warn those who
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  Speaker 1: have trodden it in love and comprehension. When the wensome
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  Speaker 1: skies turn stony and melancholy, winter rain ends in chill
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  Speaker 1: mist January has days to breathe, whose air is like
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  Speaker 1: breathing under water. Down in spring cold Lake, where the
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  Speaker 1: incredible pleasureless fishes move through their gray element, finding pallid amusement,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps in nudging frogs and turtles well tucked up under
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  Speaker 1: a blanket of mud. They are cold blooded, of course,
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  Speaker 1: and not suppor use to mind the oppressiveness of the
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  Speaker 1: liquid atmosphere. But after our cells moving in such an environment,
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  Speaker 1: it is marvelous to ponder that any creatures prefer it,
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  Speaker 1: and good to forenow that our own world will swim
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  Speaker 1: out into a splendid, frosty weather for its days of
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  Speaker 1: quiet sparkle. We would remember January not for lashing tempests,
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  Speaker 1: april delusions, or brooding fog, unbroken snow with blazing spangles
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  Speaker 1: shifting as the sun moves, and above it twittering sparrows
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  Speaker 1: clinging by one claw to stalks of yarrow or mustard
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  Speaker 1: while they shake the seeds loose with the other. Old
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  Speaker 1: stone walls suddenly demonstrating that they have color. When the
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  Speaker 1: foreground is white and showing bluish brown earthen red and
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  Speaker 1: gray light, with mica streams covered with pearly ice that
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  Speaker 1: floods into brilliant orange at sunset. Spruce and hemlock imp
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  Speaker 1: curiously outlined on even far off hills, skating time without
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  Speaker 1: enkindled logs within. That is the midwinter we remember when
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  Speaker 1: the sterner messengers sped from the pool have gone again.
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  Speaker 1: Were it not for the blizzard, we might fail to
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  Speaker 1: know so well the comforting symbolism of fire light at
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  Speaker 1: play upon clean hearts. Many go all their lives aware
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  Speaker 1: only of the coziness or inconvenience of winter, never facing
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  Speaker 1: the daggered's gale alone, nor struck by the terror of
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  Speaker 1: a hostile nature, or the awe of cold that may
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  Speaker 1: not soon relent what one perceives in the volcano, tidal
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  Speaker 1: wave or blizzard. Another is spared the less, and perhaps
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  Speaker 1: being postponed until he is ready for it. Spring comes
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  Speaker 1: sweetly to the milliner's this month. To the wilderness. With
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  Speaker 1: rapid and menacing step comes full winter. Chapter two, a
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  Speaker 1: woodland valentine forces astir in the deepest roots grow restless
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  Speaker 1: beneath the lock of frost bulbs, try the door. February
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  Speaker 1: stillness is charged with a faint anxiety, as if the
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  Speaker 1: powers of light, pressing up from the Earth's center and
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  Speaker 1: streaming down from the stronger sun had troubled the buried seeds,
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  Speaker 1: who strive to answer their liberator, so that the guarding
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  Speaker 1: mother must whisper over and over. Not yet not yet
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  Speaker 1: better to stay behind the frozen gate, than to come
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  Speaker 1: too early up into realms where the wolves of cold
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  Speaker 1: are still a prow. Wisely, the snow places a white
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  Speaker 1: hand over eager life unseen but perceived in February's woods,
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  Speaker 1: as a swimmer feels the changing moods of water in
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  Speaker 1: a lake fed by springs, only the thick stars closer
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  Speaker 1: and more companionable than in months of foliage, burn, alert
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  Speaker 1: and serene. In February, the milky Way is revealed a
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  Speaker 1: vinelylocent too lonely people's herdsmen, mountaineers, fishermen, trappers who are
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  Speaker 1: abroad in the starlit hours of this grave and silent
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  Speaker 1: time of year. It is in the long frozen night
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  Speaker 1: that the sky has most red flowers. February knows the
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  Speaker 1: beat of twilight wings. Drifting north. Again come birds who
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  Speaker 1: only pretended to forsake us adventurers, not so fond of safety,
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  Speaker 1: but that they dare risk finding. How snow bunting and
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  Speaker 1: pine finch have plundered the cones of the evergreens, while chickadees,
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  Speaker 1: sparrows and crows are supervising from established stations. All the
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  Speaker 1: more domestic supplies available. A sparrow, often making it possible
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  Speaker 1: to annoy even a duck out of her share of
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  Speaker 1: cracked corn. Ranged along a brown draped oak branch. In
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  Speaker 1: the waxing light, crows show a lordly glistening of feathers
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  Speaker 1: sun on a sweeping wing in flight, as the quality
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  Speaker 1: of sun on a ripple where hemlocks gather deep in
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  Speaker 1: somber woods. The great horned owl has thus soon, perhaps
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  Speaker 1: working amid snows at her task, built a nest wherein
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  Speaker 1: march will find sturdy balls of fluff. The thunderous love
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  Speaker 1: song of her mate sounds through the timber. By the
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  Speaker 1: time the wren has nested, these winter babies will be
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  Speaker 1: solemn with the wisdom of their famous race. There is
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  Speaker 1: no season like the end of February for cleaning out brooks.
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  Speaker 1: Hastening yellow waters toss a dreary wreckage of torn or
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  Speaker 1: ashen LEAs twigs, acorn cups, stranded rafts of bark, and
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  Speaker 1: button balls from the sycamore, never to come to seed,
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  Speaker 1: standing on one bank or both. According to the sundering
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  Speaker 1: flood's ambition, the night, with staff and bold forefinger sets
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  Speaker 1: the water princess free. She goes, then curtsying and dimpling
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  Speaker 1: over the shining gravel sli from beneath the ice that
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  Speaker 1: roofs her on the uplands down to the softer valleys,
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  Speaker 1: where her quickened step will be heard by the frogs
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  Speaker 1: in their mansions of mud, and the fish recluses in
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  Speaker 1: rayless pools will rise to the light she brings down
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  Speaker 1: from the frozen mountains. In summer, birds and winds must
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  Speaker 1: bear the seed of alpine flowers, lilies that lean against
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  Speaker 1: unmelting snows, poppies, bright colored herbs, and the palely gleaming
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  Speaker 1: fringed beauties that change names with countries. How just and
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  Speaker 1: reasonable it would seem to be that flowers which edge
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  Speaker 1: the ice in July should consent to bloom in lowlands
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  Speaker 1: no colder in February. The pageant of blue, magenta and
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  Speaker 1: scarlet on the austere upper slopes of the rockies, where
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  Speaker 1: nights are bitter. To the summer wanderer, why should it
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  Speaker 1: not flourish to leeward of a valley barn in months
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  Speaker 1: when icicles hang from the eaves in this tamer's setting,
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  Speaker 1: But no mountain tempests are endurable to the silken petaled
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  Speaker 1: the treacherous lowland winter, with its coaxing suns followed by
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  Speaker 1: roaring desolation, is for blooms bred in a different tradition.
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  Speaker 1: The light is clear but hesitant, A delicate wine by
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  Speaker 1: no means the mighty vintage of April February has no intoxication.
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  Speaker 1: The vague eagerness that gives the air a pulse where
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  Speaker 1: feels lie voteless comes from the secret stirring of imprisoned life.
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  Speaker 1: Spring and sunrise are forever miracles, but the early hour
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  Speaker 1: of the wonder hardly hints the exuberance of its fulfillment.
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  Speaker 1: Even the forest dwellers move gravely, thankful for any promise
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  Speaker 1: of kindness from the Lord of Day as he hangs
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  Speaker 1: above a sea gray landscape, but knowing well that their
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  Speaker 1: long duress is not yet to end. Deer pathetically haunt
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  Speaker 1: the outskirts of farms, gazing upon cattle feeding in winter
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  Speaker 1: pasture from the stack, and often after dark, clearing the
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  Speaker 1: fences and robbing the same disheveled storehouse. Not a chipmunk
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  Speaker 1: winks from the top rail the woodchuck after his single
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  Speaker 1: expeditionary effort on candleness, which he is obliged to make
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  Speaker 1: for mankind's enlightenment has retired without being seen in sunshine
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  Speaker 1: or shadow, and has not the slightest intention of disturbing
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  Speaker 1: himself just yet. Though snowdrops may feel uneasy, he knows
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  Speaker 1: too much about the IDEs of March. Quietest of all
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  Speaker 1: northern woods creatures, the otter slides from one ice hung
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  Speaker 1: waterfall to the next. The solitary scamperer left is the
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  Speaker 1: cotton tail, appealing because he is the most pursued and
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  Speaker 1: politest of the furry, faithfully trying to give no offense
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  Speaker 1: except when starvation points to winter cabbage. He is nonetheless faye.
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  Speaker 1: So is the mink, though he moves like a phantom.
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  Speaker 1: Mosses where on March in coming treads first show one
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  Speaker 1: hue brighter. In the swamps, pussy willows have made a
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  Speaker 1: gray dawn in viny caverns, where the day's own dawn
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  Speaker 1: looks in but faintly, and the flushing of the red
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  Speaker 1: willow betrays reveries of a not impossible cowslip upon the
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  Speaker 1: bank beneath. The blue jay has mentioned it in the
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  Speaker 1: course of his voluble recollections. He is unwilling to prophesy arbutus,
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  Speaker 1: but he will just hint that when the leaves in
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  Speaker 1: the wood lot show through snow as early as this
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  Speaker 1: Once he found a hepatica bud the last day of February,
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  Speaker 1: speaking with his old friend the muskrat last week, and
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  Speaker 1: when you can see red pebbles in the creek at
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  Speaker 1: five o'clock in the afternoon. But it is no use
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  Speaker 1: to expect yellow orchids on the west Knoll this spring,
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  Speaker 1: for some people found them there last year, and after
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  Speaker 1: that you might as well. Of course, cowslip beside red
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  Speaker 1: willows are remarkably pretty, just as blue jays in a
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  Speaker 1: cedar with blueberries. He is interminable, but then he has
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  Speaker 1: seen a great deal of life, and February needs her
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  Speaker 1: blue jays, unwearied and conquering faith. Chapter three, Ways of
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  Speaker 1: the March Hair. Follow him to the woods, and you
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  Speaker 1: know his fascination. But never give the March hare a
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  Speaker 1: reference for sobriety. His reputation cannot be rehabilitated. Yet his
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  Speaker 1: intimates love him in spite of it. He is such
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  Speaker 1: an accomplished tease. He wakens, playful and ingratiating with the sun.
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  Speaker 1: He skips cajolingly among the crocuses, and before an hour
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  Speaker 1: passes he is rushing about the fields in a fury,
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  Speaker 1: scattering the worn out brown grasses, scaring the first robins,
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  Speaker 1: and bouncing over the garden fence to break the necks
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  Speaker 1: of any tulips deceived by his morning mood. Impossible animal,
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  Speaker 1: he is an eccentric born, glorying in his queerness, and
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  Speaker 1: nonetheless there are some who think he knows the zest
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  Speaker 1: of life better than aprils infatuated starling or the woodchuck
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  Speaker 1: drowsing in may clover. He loves to kick the chilly
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  Speaker 1: brooks into foam and fluster them until they run over
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  Speaker 1: their unthawed banks, and tear down hill and through the
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  Speaker 1: swamp to alarm the rivers, so that they too come
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  Speaker 1: out on land, and the whole world looks as though
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  Speaker 1: it had gone back to the watery beginning. He chases
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  Speaker 1: north the snowy owl ornament of our winter woods and
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  Speaker 1: fraternizes with the sinful sparrow shrike and grosby leave, saying
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  Speaker 1: that really it is growing quite warm, And glancing behind
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  Speaker 1: them they behold the march hare, turning somersaults in snow drifts.
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  Speaker 1: He freezes the mud that the shore lark was enjoying.
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  Speaker 1: No one depends upon him yet to see swift and
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  Speaker 1: enchanting changes of sky, lake and woodland. Go forth with
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  Speaker 1: the March hare and find with him better than quiet
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: the earth astir trees lose the archaic outline as leaf
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  Speaker 1: buds swell, Red maples and black ashed wigs. Yellow flowers
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  Speaker 1: on the willow begin the coloring of a landscape that
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  Speaker 1: will not fade to gray and done again until December comes.
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  Speaker 1: The lilacs are growing impatient, for already the sophisticated city
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  Speaker 1: lilac bush is wearing costly bloom, careless that a debut
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  Speaker 1: made so early early ends. The crocuses springs opening ballet.
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  Speaker 1: Dressed in pastel, tents take their places on the lawn,
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  Speaker 1: standing delicately erect, waiting for bird music. Unknown to March's gales.
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  Speaker 1: The still swamp pools are fringed with shooting green, full
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  Speaker 1: of hints of cowslips and arbutus few know on what
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  Speaker 1: Hillsides is lifting the warm leaf blanket, trusting that vandal
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  Speaker 1: admirers are far away. The March violet is sung more
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  Speaker 1: than seen, visiting northern slopes and woods hollows only by caprice,
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  Speaker 1: but all the legends lingering over it, and the magic
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  Speaker 1: beauty it gives to maidens who gather it at dawn
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  Speaker 1: make the violet still for lyrical needs. The flower of
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  Speaker 1: March cuddled close to sun warmed stones, cloaked by quaint leaves,
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  Speaker 1: lined with sapphire and maroon. Sometimes now the hepatica has come,
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  Speaker 1: and blood root, nested under boulders and in fence corners
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  Speaker 1: where the sun is faithful, lifts preying exquisite petals that
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  Speaker 1: open swiftly from the slim bud and are scattered by
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  Speaker 1: a touch. The dark blue grape hyacinth stands calm in
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  Speaker 1: winds and bitter weather. Waist deep in snow, it proudly
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  Speaker 1: holds its ground. Sap is visibly climbing to the highest limbs.
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  Speaker 1: It seems even to be mounting in the ancient wild
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  Speaker 1: grapevines that swing from the roof of the wood, bearing
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  Speaker 1: no buds and looking dead a hundred years, though there
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  Speaker 1: is life beneath the somber and shaggy bark. Sap called
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  Speaker 1: back through the ducts of the winter warped thorn, solitary
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  Speaker 1: in the clearing where the cruel nor'easter race will cover
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  Speaker 1: the sad branches. Once the soft days are here with
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  Speaker 1: shining blossoms. The year turns when the sap runs. Little
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  Speaker 1: boys who have their sugar maples picked out and under guard,
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  Speaker 1: being more forehanded about some things than others, are whittling intensely,
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  Speaker 1: loneliest of all sounds. The peepers take up their forsaken
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  Speaker 1: song in flooded meadows, silenced in ghostly fashioned by a
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  Speaker 1: footstep that comes near heart broken chant. It is more
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  Speaker 1: elegy than spring song, hard to hear at dusk, yet
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  Speaker 1: it is certain that those peepers are delighted that march
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  Speaker 1: is here, as content with their fate. While they utter
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  Speaker 1: the poignant notes, as the emphatic old frogs by the
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  Speaker 1: deeper water, wander birds, almost unresting, are posting north again
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  Speaker 1: through the twilights, bold wild geese are awing for Canada.
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  Speaker 1: Quiet returning hawks cross the valleys, and the pine grosbeak
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  Speaker 1: hastens past spring dowers the devoted but undesired starling with
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  Speaker 1: a pleasant voice, which will change by summer into an
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  Speaker 1: exasperating croak. And so many of our birds suffer this
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  Speaker 1: unfair loss that a feathered critic would have good reason
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  Speaker 1: to declare that poets ought to be slain in youth.
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  Speaker 1: The terrifying little screech owl wails from shadowy woods, and
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  Speaker 1: from the venerable timber sounds the horned owl's obscure threat.
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  Speaker 1: The chickadee repeats with nature pride, his charming repertoire of
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  Speaker 1: two notes. Spring soon nothing is refused, this fortunate one
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  Speaker 1: born with a sweet disposition and a winsome song. While sparrows,
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  Speaker 1: angrily conducting their courtships, remain on earth solely by tent
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  Speaker 1: of original cleverness. Meadow mole and turtle woodchuck and chipmunk
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  Speaker 1: are recovering from a three months nap, waiting patiently in
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  Speaker 1: the sunshine for the season to begin. Snakes come out
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  Speaker 1: with the rest of the yawning company. Fish glitter again
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  Speaker 1: in the hurrying streams, building their nests and houses like
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  Speaker 1: the others, often obeying a spring impulse to rush from
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  Speaker 1: lake to outlet, or from quiet waters to streamhead, ending
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  Speaker 1: their journey suddenly and forever amid wire meshes. The brooks
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  Speaker 1: are icy on the mildest days, with melted snow from
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  Speaker 1: the mountains, where hemlocks green as Arctic waters shutting out
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  Speaker 1: the sun keep away white floor long after the valley
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  Speaker 1: wears grasses. Whoever has a touch of madness to lend
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  Speaker 1: him sympathy with the march hair likes the bewildering days
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  Speaker 1: through which he scampers to vanish at the edge of April,
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  Speaker 1: Rebellious whitening ponds and wind bent trees, defiant buds, and
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  Speaker 1: all the kindled life of marsh Hill and Woodland set
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  Speaker 1: free once more from cold, but not from dread. Here
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  Speaker 1: at the coming of the mighty month their promise of release.
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  Speaker 1: But only to comrades who will run with him through
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  Speaker 1: muddy lanes and tangled brush does he show his treasures.
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  Speaker 1: Forest creatures fed like the couriers, petals lifted like the
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: banners of life, resurgent. End of chapters one, two and three,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Chapters four, five, and six of Minstrels Weather by Marian Storm.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter four
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: The April Moment. A survivor of so much that her
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: fear is gone. Triumphant April answers the dark powers as
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: if they could never speak again. Spring after spring, she
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: stands among the flying petals and smiles at the last
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: bitter winds. She will not grant that the green earth
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: was ever vanquished, fiercely alive as now it is. Scornfully.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: The new silver bloom on the clover sheds the relentless rain. Undaunted, reaffirming,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: she summons all beauty of color, music, and fragrance beneath
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: her banners, with a vitality so profound and impregnable that
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: more than other months, she is careless of man's sympathy. April, preoccupied,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: hastens from crumbling furrow to meadows that shout the coming
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: of the green. Intense and too eager for tenderness, she
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: graves no admiration, quite without excuse. The song sparrow sits
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: on a wine colored willow twig and sings frantically. Anyone
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: has as good a reason for ecstasy as he, merely
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: that the dumb struggle is ended, and the long suns
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: have returned in splendor, contemplative between their dark, exotic leaves,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: dog tooth violets fill the light flagged hollows. Spring beauties
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: open warily at daybreak to show stamens of deep rose,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: where imperious amber waters go foaming through the swamp, spent
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: thrift gold of cowslips is swept down to the rivers,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and budded branches that leaned too close above the ripple
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: are shut out from the sun world for a while.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Mauve and canary slippers are waiting for the fairy queen,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: where our wild orchid of the North dangles them on
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: remote knolls, but they are usually found and borne off
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: by someone for whom they are in no way suitable.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Translucent young leaves glitter beside the stream's path. Dandelion rosettes
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: appear with serene impartiality on guarded lawn and mountain pasture,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: where steel also the polite but persistent pussy tiptoes, asserting
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: the right to display white leaves in spring, if so
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: a plant should choose. The snail has deserted his shell
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: and gone forth to take the air, at the risk
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: of being plowed under. None of April's children remember or
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: for sea. The vivid present is enough. The apple boughs
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: are inlaid with coral. The peach is a cloud of dawn,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: and petals of the forward cherry and pear are floating
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: reluctantly down. Wild fruit trees mysteriously planted are misty white
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: above the woodland thicket, scented crab, apple, and twisted branch
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: of plum. This is the month of blossoms, as May
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: is the month of shimmering leaves, and June of the
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: fruitless flower. The blackbird swings at the foamy crest of
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the hall, disturbed by a thousand delights and notes too
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: few to tell them. The crow hoarsely mentions his rapture
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: as he flaps above the moving harrow, and the new
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: lambs look on in a tremulous, wounded manner, while the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: famished woodchuck makes away with the clover heads they were
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: just about to endeavor to bide off uncertainly. The wondering
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: calves proceed about the pasture, not yet at the stage
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: in life where they will skip with touching curiosity after
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: every object that stirs at dusk and glistening morning. There
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: are bird songs such as only April years, the outbursts
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: of welcome to the light, and the sleepy fluting of
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: the robins when the sky turns to a soft prism
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: in the west. Fainter more melancholy even than in March,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: is the twilight lament of the peepers. They are alien
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: to the area of ape, New Englands. Forget me nots
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: are fleet turquoise in the grasses New Englands. Ar Buddhist
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: flowers lie flushed pearls among the ancient leaves. But everywhere
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: are the violets of three colors, yellow for the pool's edge,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: white among the bog lands, and blue as pervasive as
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the sunlight on the hill slope, road bank and forest floor.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: And there are violets of an unfathomable blue, sprinkled with white,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: like wisps of cloud against far mountains. Some grow close
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: to earth, taught by past dismay. Others, long stemmed and sweet,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: will live and suffer and mend their ways next year.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: The wind flower meets the breeze, a slim princess, incredibly fragile,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: yet broken, less easily than the strong tulip, vaguely touched
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: with rose or white as blood. Root tulips dwell not
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: only on the ground. They have parted to great opaque
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: petals at the tops of trees, startling to see in
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: the leafless wood. Watercress glitters in the cold streams where
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: trout winter weary, are on patrol for those flies now
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: magnificent in their jeweled dress of spring. The first oak
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: leys are delicately crimson at the end of the bow.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Disregard amid this pageantry of La Vita nuova, the outrageous
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: satire of brown skeleton fingers that point stiffly up through
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: the shining blades of grass, if they seem to be
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: a chilling cynicism of nature, Who has not found an
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: April dandelion telling a braver story through winter? Snow cedar
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: and a balsam twig are golden tipped. Nothing is unchanged.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Immortal wings that beat through February gales to reach this
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: land of their tradition are fluttering now about the building
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: of the nest. The smooth chimney swift flashes above the
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: barn and is gone. With drooping wings. He hangs poised
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: against the daffodil sky in his evening play peaceably among
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: the lilacs. The contented bluebird sits, though, through bulb root
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: and chrysalis, has passed the irresistible current that will let
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: no sharer of the earth be still, not stone, nor seed,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: nor man. Into this forced march. April steps with gladness,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: hailing the order predestined to change. Join her, unresisting Take
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: for your own the moment of escape, which the singer
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: in the Blossoms freely claims. Life's fullness is measured by
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: these salvaged April moments, when suddenly joy becomes a simple
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: and close dwelling thing, when for a merciful, lighted instant,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the impersonal and endless beauty of the world seems enough.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Chapter five. The crest of spring, flickering soft lea spangled
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: with sunlit rain give may a robe. Diamond sown as
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: lighted spray may weave for the sea, skimming wings catch
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: sunrise colors. The grass blade is borne down by the
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: exquisite burden of one translucent pearl. This is the luminous
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: youth of the year, and its splendor lies deeper than
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the glitter of dew and rain jewels, For it is
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: visible in the forbidding strongholds of hemlock and pine, where
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: a sunless world still shines with may. In one month
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: only nature lights her unquenchable lamp look down upon the
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: orchard from a hill. The young leaves are lanterns of
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: sheer green silk, not the richly draped and shadowy foliage
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: of full summer. Lustrous is the new red of poison.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Ivy and woodbine of swamp maple and slowly budding oak,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: where in July the hard light will play as upon metal.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Lake and stream are faintly shimmering. Gray rain cannot dim
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: the radiant freshness. For trees, thus, queenly clothed in blossoms,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: never bend submissive to the pelting skies. Let that fragment
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: of creation which bears umbrellas prostrate its spirit before the
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: blossoms storm seven times renewed. The answer of the flowered
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: thorn is always exultant, amid departing petals which have played
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: their role and gone voyaging on rain drops. The May
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: month flaps its glad green leaves like wings. Wild shrubs
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: upon the mountain slopes are in thronging bloom, delicately pink
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: and nectar laden. The prodigal azalea calls to the honey bees,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: always bitterly industrious and severely intent upon duty, amid a
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: general festival. It is a great satisfaction sometimes to find
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: a bee overtaken by intoxication and night within a water
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: lily or hollyhock, his obtrusive good example smothered sweetly. For
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: once he was not at the hive in time to
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: murmur of his heavy day of posting from garden to meadow.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Dowered with a white simplicity. Beyond the pensive moonflowers, the
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: bracts of the dogwood seem afloat among gray branches, misty
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: scene far off, clear cut to nearer view, eloquent of
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: spring without fragrance, as without pretense. The mountain Laurel holds
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: above gleaming leaves, its marvelously carven cups, faint pink or
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: white amber flecked all winter, it has kept the green
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: when ground pine lay snow bound and spruces sagged with sleet.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: The victor may find his wreath at any time of year,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: for our Laurel has it ready high toward the stars
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: in regal manner. The tulip trees lift their broader chalices.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: It is possible in these, on the topmost boughs, that
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the fairy sleep, where mortals never climb up to look.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: In billberry, chadbush and briars stand in may marriage robes
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: of white, quiet and beautiful, scented at dusk, when the
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: sun warmth begins to leave the blossoms, the red haw
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: wears a little fine golden lace farther south, the rhododendron
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: is gorgeously displayed magenta verging on damson. The air is
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: precious with the plentiful sweetness of lilac and magnolia of
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the memorial lavender lilac that summons homesickness to city parks
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: on evenings of May. The carmine glow of the flowering
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: quince is here brought from its tropic wilderness. The long
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: flushed curve of the almond spray bends meekly towards the
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: sod opulent is every bush, though its blossoming may be
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: secret in colours beloved of kings. The velvet ma newtly
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: perfect iris commands the garden path behind it in despair.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: The old time bleeding heart laments, and the bells of
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: the valley lily hang chiming fragrance impatient climb the red
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: stalked paeonies. The current is in green but leadingly sweet blossom.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: High thick grass and clover in mayfields are only the
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: setting for the dazzling buttercup, who shakes the dews from
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: her closed petals before daybreak and folds them prayerfully at
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: about the time the birds turn home first white daisies,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: supremely fresh and lucid as all maize glories are, show
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: a few mithleading foam flecks of the flood with which
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: they intend to overwhelm. The crop of hay. Feathery yellow
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: of the wild mustard nods beside the road, as if
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: it were not anchored to immovable roots. Already the sapphire
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: star grass is hiding in the meadow. Gone are the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: blossoms of the wild strawberry. The canary colored five finger
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: vine would lace itself over the world given but half
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: an opportunity. So would the ramble of the fair white
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: blossom and maroon bordered leaf. Still are restless wings now
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: upon the guarded nest. Some flash along the turned furrow
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: circle near the eaves dip sharply to the ripple. Willow
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: fronds are startled by the glinting blue of the kingfisher
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: scarlet of the tanager. Once more the chimneys of old
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: houses know the flickering swallow. The oriole has come to
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: the orchard again, the wrent to the grape arbor. Tiny
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: rabbits beholding for the first time what white clover can be,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: twitch their noses in content. Tired children returning from rifled
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: woodlands with too many posies drop them in the path,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: like flower girls entrusted to strew the way of summer.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: It is more comfortable not to grant flowers the capacity
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: for pain, But we demand nevertheless that they enjoy giving
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: pleasure to us. So doubtless they are glad to be
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: of service, even in this thwarted fashion. Yet May's store
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: is manifold. Her waiting buds can replace the scattered ones.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: The face of nature wears in the shining month a beauty,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: something less than mature, but more than the mischief and
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: the troubling intensity of April. The wonder of the hour,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: the adieu of spring, and the rejoicing shout of coming
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: summer dwells there a subdued, impassioned note. The crest of
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: the year's youth merges, like all crests, into the wave beyond,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: renewed forever, Like the waves. To man alone has been
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: given the difficult task of keeping on without a spring.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: That singular adversity is ours in common with inanimate things.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: May Rose and Lilac come back each year to the
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: forsaken house, But to the house May brings no change
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: about it. A world of snow becomes a world of
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: blossoms as for us, and the sun creates, but the
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: house needs aid of human hands. Man of Earth's quickened beauty.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: In Luminous May, Chapter six, hay harvest time by the
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: manifold hay feels only were her wild rose token vanished.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: A traveler returning from another land to our June, not
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: knowing the time of year, might name the month in
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: days just before hay harvest. The glistening dance of meadow
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: grasses is most splendid. Their soft obedience to the winds
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: is readiest. Deep rose plumes of sorrel, the wine colored
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: red top smoky heads of timothy are forever a ripple,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and though overstrewn with flowers, they reveal, when bent beneath
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: the step of the southwest breeze, a thousand lowlier flowers
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: near the roots. Here the wild morning glory. The tiny
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: field convolvulus hides perilously in the mowing. White clover and
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: yellow figh finger are spread. The grass flower holds up
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: its single jewel. This swaying stems are trellises to many
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: a wandering vine. There are fairy arbors where a tired
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: elf might sleep guarded from the sun as well as
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: in a jungle. Here too, the wild strawberries are ripening,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: not breathing yet the bouquet of July, but the white
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: wild strawberry lover of the shades has already reached its
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: pallid ripeness. Far beneath the moving surface of the grass
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: ocean lies a dim and mysterious world, lined with track
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: and counter track of the beetle, caverns of the mole,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and the unremaining castle of the ant. Here the sleek
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: woodchuck passes imperceptibly, the ingenuous cotton tail finds his brief paradise.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Small moth fold their wings and sleep. Above are light
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: motion and the clearest, strongest colors of the year, untarnished
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: by hot suns, unmixed with the later browns. The dark
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: eyed yellow daisy sun worshiper rises amid the fresh brilliance
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: of that other starry petalled weed which only sheep will eat.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Celestial blue chicory wanders in from the roadside and will
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: not thereafter be denied. Yarrow, with its balsam fragrance and
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: fern like leaf, The first delicate wild carrot, a sway
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: gold finch, yellow of the moth, million clover heads of
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: the Tyrian dye. Sunny spray of mustard lie scattered on
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: the crests of hayfield waves in the low grounds, on
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: bouldered hillsides, far in the woods, wherever the mowing machine
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: will grant it. A summer spreads the exquisite wild rose,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: dowered like other flowers of June, the water lily, the
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: wild grape blossom, the syringe with a perfume as wistfully
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: sweet as the form and hue of its chalice. That fragrance, unearthly,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: never fails to bring a catch of the breath, a
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: start of memory. When in whatever place it is encountered again,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: you seldom find a wild rose withered. They cast their
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: petals down without a struggle, and a throng of ardent
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: pink buds are waiting on the bush. So it is
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: with the water lily. When the hour strikes, she draws
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: her green cloak once more about her and retires from
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the sun. The meadow roue has shaken out veil upon
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: floating veil. In the woodlands, the shaded knolls are sprinkled
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: lavender with wild geraniums willing to be background for the
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: may windflower, or the buttercups of June among the rocks,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: twinkling red and yellow. In the sandy, sunny place, the
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: columbine swings her cups of honey, impartially for glittering humming
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: bird and blunt nosed serious bee. Columbines are delicious, Could
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: anyone regard them sensibly and not as something animate and
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: almost winged? The claret colored milkweed, a natural paradox, holds
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: flowing nectar too. But there is a paler milkweed, so
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: softly tinted of pink, yellow and white as to be
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: no color at all, where too, the little yellow butterflies
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: drift to sip at dusk. The blossomed elder rests like
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: white fog in the hollows, scenting all the country ways
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: and promising elder blossomed wine. The dryads draft in moist
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: and dark retreats under hemlocks and at the doors of caves.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: The ghost lamp is lighted in the brightest spot it
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: can find. The small BlackBerry lily paints against the ledge,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: its speckles orange star. It is the time of perfect ferns,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: uncurled quickly from the brown balls and making our northern
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: woods tropical with the sumptuous break and temperate imitations of
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: the tree firm. They fill the glades and scale the cliffs.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: They mingle enchantingly along creeks and at the edge of
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: the pond with the regal hosts of the blue flag,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: the lavishly sown iris of the meadows. They are matted
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: close in the swamps, plumy on the hilltops, from mosses,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: on old logs, spring ferns, almost as fairy as the
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: fronds of the moss itself. Into the whispering twilight of
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: June come many creatures to play strange games and singing
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: such songs as even the many stringed orchestra of the
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: sunlit Hayfield does not know. The swooping bat darts from
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: thick hung woodbine and noiselessly crosses the garden, brushes the
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: hollyhowks and speeds to the moon. Moths, white and pallid,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: green wander like spirits among the paeonies. Sometimes the humming
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: bird shakes the trumpet vine in the dark, queerly restless,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: though he is Apollo's acolyte. The fireflies are lambently a wing.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: The cricket's pleading interrupted song is half silenced by the steady,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: hot throb of the locusts. The tree toad's eerie note
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: comes faint and sweet, but from what cranny of the
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: bark he only knows. The mother bird guardian, even in sleep,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: speaks drowsily to her children. From the brooding timber. The
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: owl sends his call of despair across acres of friendly fields,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: placid in the dew. June nights are wakeful. Then enchantment deepens,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: for there comes no pause in darkness for the joy
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: of Earth. End of chapters four, five and six, Chapter seven,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: eight and nine of Menstrel Weather by Marian's Storm. This
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter seven The
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: month of yellow flowers from Valley. After valley dies away,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: the drowsy croon of the mowing machine leaving to the grasshoppers.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: The fragrant, drying hay now comes July, and many hues
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: of yellow spreading her gold beside dark back waters and
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: along a sun warm stubble whose variest singing life is
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: loudest through these shimmering afternoons. Tawny beauties are abroad in
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: woodways and sea marshes, where the hot air shines and
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: quivers over shallow pools. Yellow water lilies float sleepily beneath
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: curved canopies, while the lucent pallors of the white water lily,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: one by one are dimmed. Moving serenely toward its climax,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: the season drinks the sun and takes the color of
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: its slanting light. The flame lily lifts a burnt orange
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: cup straight toward the sky. The yellowmettow lily bends down
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: over the damp mold it seeks, but both love deep
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: woods and blazing suddenly above a fern bed, the rich
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: flowers startle like a butterfly of the andes adrift in
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Canadian forests. They are princesses of the tropics, incongruously banished
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: to northern swamps, but scornfully at ease. The faulse Solomon
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: seal in proud assemblies, wears with an oddly holiday air.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Its freckled coral beads always allure to the errant cow
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: and jack in the pulpit. Having been invested with some
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: churchly rank which demands the red robe is ready to
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: cast off his cassock of lustrous striped green for one
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: of scarlet. The pendent flowered jewelweed plant with temperament, and
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: therefore called two touch me not droops its dew lined
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: leaves along the traveled lanes, for it is making ready
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: small surprise packages of seed that snap ferociously open at
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: a touch, and thus intriguing every passerby into sowing its crop.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: It earns the name unfairly borne by the innocent yellow
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: toadflax snap dragon, which snaps only at bumblebees gaily in
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: possession of the fields. Black eyed Susan, known to the
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: farmer as that confounded yellow bull's eye, is holding her own,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: prepared to resist to the utmost the onslaught of the
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: golden rod, which presumes to unfurl in summer the banners
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: of fall. The clear yellow evening primrose ccion of one
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: of our very best old English families, associates democratically with
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: a peasant millian stock canary fleck, since they both fancy
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: sun and sand magnificent. Sometimes upon the sandbanks rises a
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: clump of that copper in the sunshine flower. The butterflyweed
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: soon to become as fugitive as are fair lost trailing arbutus,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: the cardinal and the fringe gentsien if its lovers do
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: not woo it less selfishly. All beauty refuses captivity. In
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: upland meadows, the orange hawkweed is afoot, waving its delirious
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: colored paint brush, wantonly amid the pasture grass in the
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: light hours, but folding it at sunset. No sipper of
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: the dews brook sunflowers have come to the edge of
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: the stream, but not to look into the waters. Their
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: sunward gazing petals are delicately scented, surpassing their sisters of
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: the fenced garden. The half tamed tiger lily, haunter of
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: deserted door yards, and faithful even to abandoned mountain farms
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: long since given over to the wildcat and the owl
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: wander by dusty roadsides, offers each morning new buds, and
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: by twilight they have bloomed and withered, like the may rose.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: This is an allegaic flower, clinging to lost gardens when
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: all the rest have vanished. Though patches of tansy herb
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: of witch lore will show pungent golden buttons for long
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: years untended, Let the forgotten gardener butt plant at once.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: How many a little cabin built in eagerness and hope
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: is remembered at last only by the tiger lily, may
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: rose and chimney swift yellow sweet clover. Catching a root
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: hold anywhere, declaring the gravel bed a garden makes it
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: happiness to breathe the entranced air. The yellow butterflies, like
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: leaves of autumn, tremble and flurry, where the sun steeped
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: field meets the sweet dark wood. Among the rocks gleam
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: ebony seeds of the BlackBerry lily, whose star of orange
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: and umber is a to set. Who knows besides the
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: birds that embroidered on the moths. New scarlet partridge fairies
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: are ripe, hung from the vagrant vine of pale veined
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: leaf that does not fear the snow. Only a month
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: ago in this fairy greenery lay the furry white partridge blossom,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: almost invisible, but with a fragrance like that of just
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: opened water lilies. And now the green fruit colours to
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: the Christmas hwe there are no flowers like these. The
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: wood fairies wear them with their gowns of spangled cobweb
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: trimmed with moonlight. Bow apples with a sweetness like that
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: of flowers distilled by the intense sun show the first
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: brown seeds from the high piled loads of hay journeying
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: slowly to the mow fall. The dried buttercup and daisies
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: that danced in the mowing grass ceaseless. Are locusts heavy
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: as the air above the garden, where flocks and strawberry
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: shod arab tinge it Persian sweet clustered blueberries are dropped.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Upon the mountains and in the swamps, sometimes over quicksands,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: shows the darkling sheen of the high bush huckleberry. The
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: odor of the balsam fir is drawn out and spread
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: far by the heat. Now the pursued brambles become the
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: BlackBerry patch. The wastelands shine yellow with the blooms of
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: the marching hard hack. It is the triumph of the
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Sun and his priest. The white day lily of the
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: cloisterral leaf worships in Fragrance, Chapter eight, the mood of August.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: The wild cherries are no longer garnet. They have darkened
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: to their harvest and hang in somber ripeness. From the
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: twig drowsy lie the grain fields and slowly purpling vineyards.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: The robin in the apple orchard is hardly to be
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: seen among the red fruited boughs from which the first
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: astrakhans are dropping. Days of unset certain suns and exultant
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: growing are over. A langorous pause has come to the year.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: Even the crows flapping away across the windy blue caw
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: in a sleepy fashion, not yet hoarse with anxiety, because
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: the huskers are hurrying the corn to cover with that
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: penurious vigilance which a crow finds so objectable. The rabbits,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: scampering and weary in the new clover time, sit out
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: in the hot sun a good deal now, like combalesce
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: and patience. They will keep this up until the faint
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: noons of November, soaring the warmth that lets them sleep
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: come winter through many a hunting party. Overhead, the woodpecker
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: knocks with less ferocity, stately on his favorite dead branch.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: At the lake's edge. The blue armored kingfisher sits to
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: watch the ripple. Only the grasshopper persists with tragical intensity
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: in his futile rehearsal for the role of head hummingbird.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: A satirical Italian compares man to the grasshopper, But no
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: man is capable of such devotion to baffled aspirations. Practice
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: in grace makes him more and more imperfect. Young wood
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: duck with portentous dignity follow their mother down the Topaz
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: Creek in single file and attentive field class, observing the
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: demented lucky bugs, the red lined lily pads of the coves.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: The turtles sound asleep on the worn stones. For the
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: wood's feathered children, this is no month of play in slumber.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: It will soon be autumn, and they must attempt the
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: long flight. The aspect of the buckwheat fields is August signet.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: From their golden rod borders reaches a world of happy
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: whiteness against sky, the color of the pickerel weed flower
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: waving softly shadowed only by the plumy clouds. The corn
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: is out in top gallant, and if you look from
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: a mountain path into the planted valley, the eCrew tassels
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: have hidden the lustrous ribbon leaves. Cornfields are never silent.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Always there is a low swish, like that of little
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: summer waves on a lake shore. Lavender and purple thistles
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: brimmed with nectar are besought by imperious bees, and the
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: great blue black butterfly. But already there pale lit ships
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: drift unreturning under sealed orders to some far harbor. In
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: the port of spring more silvery still, the milkweed is adrift.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: Fleets of white butterflies rise and fall with the sunset,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: breeze and slow twilight. Moths come from under the break
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: at the hour of dew. White flowered, the clematis and
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: wild cucumber. The creamy honeysuckle of the amorous fragrance cover
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: fence rail and stone wall give petals to the barren underbrush.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: Twine fearlessly around barbed wire, and festoon deserted barns, healing
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: herbs of long ago that once were hung every fall
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: from attic rafters. The wild iceip or mountain mint, and
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: the gray blooming bone set stand profuse but unregarded in
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: the low grounds. We buy our magic potions now, once
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: they were brewed above the back log as occasion came in.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: Ferny shadows glimmers the ivory indian pipe. The wild carrot,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: with delicate insistence, takes the field ironweed of royal purple
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: maroon shot mingles in illogical harmony with the blue verveine
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: and magenta trumpet weeds the note maker's name over for
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: us a score of flowers that Shakespeare meant by long purples.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: But surely he foresaw our northern swamps in August on
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: fire with these exuberant torches like weeds that rise tall
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: above the bogs, and earn by their arresting splendor against
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: a crimson sky, the need of immortality in song. They
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: bloom before the katiedids begin, and survive the first frost.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: A few violets, a seed crop not intended for men's gaze,
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: and hidden cautiously beneath the leaves are timidly of flower.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: They will not go unwed, but would crave to dye obscure.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: The last of the new tasting bow apples lie in
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: the orchard grass. The later apple trees, like the sunning
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: rabbit and the thought worn crow, wait for the harvest moon.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Already the unresting twigs are preparing their winter mail of
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: cork and gum, which will not be unfastened by the
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: fiercest assault of the sleep. Short stemmed flowers have arisen
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: to clothe the sharp wheat stubble. Along the mountain road
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: grow vagabond peach trees to who gouse fruit cling eager
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: blue wasps, whose aromatic gum traps many a climbing robber,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: other wanderers from the tended orchard. Cruelly sour plums and
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: rouge cheeked pears growing among the cornell bushes drop down
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: for the field mouse and woodchuck their harvest of the wilderness,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: some of them championed by the faithful flocks. And sunflower,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: once grew in door yards, now desolate. The surpassing rose
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: mallow like sunrise lights the marshes. It is not a
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: month of growth. Fruit and grain are only expanding. Weeks
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: ago the marvel of formation was complete. It is the
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: time of warm, untroubled slumber that ends with the revelle
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: of frost. Chapter nine, Summer pauses there the slow creek
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: is putting out to sea, freighted with seed and wan leaf.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: Cardinal flowers watch the waters, reddened by their image old
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: gold and ochre. The ferns beneath move listlessly up and
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: down with the ripple as spring walks first along the stream.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Autumn two comes early to the water side to kindle
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: swamp maples and give the alder colors of onyx the
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: lustrous indigo of the silky cornal hangs there in profusion.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Scented white balls of the river bush have lost their
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: golden halos, and even the red ground diedge purple of
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: the ironweed is turning umber. The fruited sweetbrier shows rust
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: falls ancient tapestry. The browns of decay, worked over with carmine, olive,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: maroon and buff, is being hung. But where the blue
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: lobelia is clustered in the low ground, summer pauses. A
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: parting sun catches the clear yellow of curtseying transfigured birch leaves,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: and looks back, waiting to give September's landscape ape a
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: hesitant farewell. It seems early to go. Pickerel weed is
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: azure still among the green bogs, the fragrant ladies dresses
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: where the white timidity of april and the three petals
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: of the enameled arrowhead flowers are dusty with gold. But
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: seeds wrapped up and brown are scattering, remembering yields to prophecy.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: The harvesters of grain and grass have gone, and the
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: tinted stubble is full of crickets and monotonous cicadas. Now
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: the crumbling furrow is folded back behind the plow, and
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: corn knives are swinging close to the solemn pumpkins. For
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: in cornfield, vineyard and orchard, and in the squirrel's domain,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: the last harvests of all are hastening to ripeness as
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: the sunset chill gives warning of a disaster foretold since
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: August by the katie did. The honey colored pippins, cracked
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: and mellow in the brooding heat, encounter the windfalls of
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: October's trees deepening red, soft yellow, and polished green. Great
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: sheltering leaves are dropping from the bird and vine. Every
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: breath tells of fruits, drying herbs, and the late flowers
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: that in deserted gardens are most pungent. In September, marigolds, tansy,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: and the cinnamon, pink, pennyroyal, and mint are betrayed. Thorn
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: apples not near ripened are not from the twig by
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: southbound birds. Still among wine colored and vermilion foliage. The
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: acorn is green, though flushed. Winter green berry and red
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: gemmed partridge vine proclaim autumn. Along the forest floor, the
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: auburn splendors are upon the sumac and the burning bush
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: of old fashioned dooryards, where too the smoke tree holds
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: its haze of seeds. Sometimes a Gentian stands erect among
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: dead grasses, a slim signora with a fringe mantilla swirled
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: close about her shoulders, and the chilly dusk the closed
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Gentsian keeps its darkly impenetrable blue beside the pink tipped
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: companion stalks of the snake's head. Fair are the sheathed
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: berries of the prickly ash, but daggers to the taste.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Often they grow among wild cherries, which juiceless now are
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: sweet as dried fruits from Persia. And there are black
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: nannyberries with their watermelon flavor, and the first spicy wild
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: grapes immortelles are bleaked paper white. On sandy hills, the
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: night shade holds berries of three colors, passing from brilliant
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: green to clouded amber and deep crimson lake, and still
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: upon it hangs the mysterious blue blossom. Shunned dog wood
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: boughs are gorgeous as a sunset, and the thick scarlet
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: clusters droop from the mountain ash. The last humming birds
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: tanned honeysuckles, languid but clinging yet to the sun world,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: the yellow lily dyes on weedy streams. If the all
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: conquering golden rod hangs the way for summer's passing with
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: the color of regret, it has made every meadow el dorado,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: with its plumes, sprays, clumps and spears spray upon delicate spray.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: The fairy lavender aster has taken possession of the roadsides
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: and fields, and before it far into the shade goes
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: the white wood aster, mingling with the flamboyant leaves of
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: dwarf oaks and the glistening red seeds of the wild turnip,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: to make September's pageant. The scented pale petals of spring,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: the drowsy contentedness of summer's fulfillment, and the Tyrian dyes
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: of fall are joined. The pallid clematis in flower along
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: rail fences still hides the black snake, chipmunk, and red squirrel,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: sometimes even the unsylphlike woodchuck. But the marshes and the
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: branches of the lakeside pines have felt for days past
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: the brief touch of many a strange bird's feet. As
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: the vanguard migrants seek regions of longer days, finely dressed
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: visitors have come to the blueberried juniper and the monstrous
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: pokeweed of the terra cotta stem. The heron breaks his
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: profound meditation to engulf a meadow frog, for he will
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: not leave until the wild geese, with mingled sound of
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: horn and bells, press south above the watercourses. Starling and
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: blue jay stay awhile to oblige with their clatter to
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: the dawn. The fur has thickened on the woods creatures.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: The blind might here September. In the uproarious arguments of
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: the crow, the despondent cries of Katie did tree, toad,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: and hoot owl. In the air is reluctance, pause, flaming
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: festoons of woodbine and poison ivy begarland, the stone wall
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: summer cannot wait eligaic purple of the asterbckon, and the
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: butterfly sleeps long upon the thistle, but she would not
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: go now. In the month of the first Bitter Sweet
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: and the Last sweet pea end of chapter seven, eight
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: and nine, Chapters ten, eleven, and twelve of Minstrel Weather
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: by Marion Storm. Chapter ten, when the oaks wear damson,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: the wild ducks are streaming south upon their journey of
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: uncounted days, Resting a little after sunset upon the cedar
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: boarded pond, they are startled into flight again by some
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: hound hunting in the night, and with beating wing and
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: eerie cry go on. The later flying geese rise clamorous
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: from among the cat tails and inside, and haste. The
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: blue heron and the pair of sad old cranes that
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: had roosted in a dead elm along shore take the
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: chill invisible trail. When day comes in threading fire, the
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: crows will humorously watch these wander birds from the forest edges.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: They feel no southward impulse. Circling the clearing, they comment
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: and uproar upon the most advisable oak for their afternoon symposium,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: expand their polished feathers, and, seated in a derisive row,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: caw a farewell to the waiter's long departing legs. Now,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: the mountaineer's girl, remembering old world peasant tales that never
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: have been told, her hurries indoors at nightfall from the
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: hallooing specter of the wild huntsmen in the clouds. Who
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: is but the anxious leader of the flying wedge buck
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: wheat'stubble in October is such a crimson as no feasilan
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: rose garden, ever unfurled. The gray hill slopes of the
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: north are festal, with its color insistent even through rains.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: Glowing from rose madder to maroon. Lower stretches out the
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: pale yellow of oat stubble, which breaks into flashing splinters
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: under the noon sun. The wheat fields show ochre and
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: darker burnt sienna. At the roots lie the reaped fields
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: of barley. Small rash flowers, fancying that the ground between
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: the grain stalks has been cultivated especially for them, Now
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: that they see the sun freely again, put on the
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: petals of spring. Amid this fair desolation, strawberry blossoms visibly
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: fay appear long stemmed and scanty flowered. Falled andelions and
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: ill timed display of April's buttercups. The BlackBerry vines go
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: richly dyed superb red velvet settings for the jewels of frost.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Down in the valley, through the wood smoke hay move
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: the slow apple wagons through the lanes. This is apple land.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: Northern spy and lemon pippin are ripe to cracking bald
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: ones will be mellow by twelfth night. The russet at easter,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: gorgeous an ephemeral hangs the maiden's blush. The strawberry apples
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: are like embers on the little trees. Rubies of the orchard.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: Lady sweets and domines are respectfully being urged into the cellar.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: And for those who will pay to learn the falseness
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: of this world shows the freight cars are receiving Ben
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: Davis's sheep noses, left often on the boughs, will hold
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: cold nectar. After the black frosts have killed the last marigold.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: They lie dull red by the orchard fence in the
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: early snow, their blunt expression revealing no secrets. You have
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: to know about them. Nothing is more inscrutable than a
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: sheep nose fast above the indigo crests stir the light
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: clouds harried by the west wind, whereon the hawk floats
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: across the valley. In the afternoon, October's lover takes the
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: hill path Mica gemmed that leads between birches of the
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: translucent yellow leaf and maple, still green but wearing scarlet
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: woodbine like a gypsy sash. For here the sunset lingers
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: till the stars, though from the valley's goblet evening has
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: sipped the waning sunlight like a clear amber wine. But
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: take at morning the path through brown low grounds, or
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: close along the wood where frost sleeps late. For here
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: that flower of desire the French Gentian grows. Its blue
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: is less mysterious and deep than the closed Gentsians, And
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: yet how many name it the cup of autumn delight.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: In the woods where leafless boughs give them blue sky,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: at last are revealed and quaint perfecttion. The ferneries of
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: the moss, palm trees towering higher than a snail's house,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: gallant green plumes with cornelians at the tip, Vast tropical
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: forests spreading for long inches, gray trailing rivers, and orange
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: cliffs of lichen leagues of delicate jungle lost under a
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: fallen leaf. A beetle clad in shining male presses through
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: the wilderness. A cobalt dragonfly sits on a shaken palm,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: pursuing a rollicking hickory nut. The chipmunk brings a hurricane,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: But these are elastic trees. That same mischief maker, incurably curious,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: chases every stranger shooting along the stone wall, and pausing
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: to peer out from the crevices with unregenerate eyes. The
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: handsome but vain woodpecker pounds at the grub dowered tree
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: he has chosen to persecute enormously ingenuous. The wayside cow
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: lumbers reproachfully out of the path, knocking the grains of
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: excellent make believe coffee from the withered dock. The drumming
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: of a partridge in his solitary transport sounds where reddened
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: dog wood glorifies a clump of furs. Sometimes the kidtle pheasant,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: hardly at home in our woods, ducks her head and
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: vanishes in the briars. Now the harvest moon, yellower than
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: the hunter's moon of ending autumn, or the strawberry moon
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: that looks upon June's roses, rises for husking time. It
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: is the last harvest when the corn is in winter
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: comes piled tumbling ears, their grains set in many a
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: curious pattern. Go by to the sorting floor and crib
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: with pumpkins. The sat traps of New England perched in
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: rickety fashion on the gleaming load. The mountain ash hangs
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: flamboyant clusters along the road from the field obedient to
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: the frost whist. The acorns are dropping, and the first
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: chestnuts lie polished mahogany in the whitened grass. At sunrise,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: the shag bark has scattered as large as the butternut,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: its dainties in their staining coats against the slopes. The
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: tinted fern patches show bronze, rusted and pansy brown, speaking
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: October and our own purple East. The tall asters, darkening
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: from lavender to the ultimate shadowy violet, join the golden rod.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: Sumacs are thronging with their proudly blazoned crests. The haw
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: is hung with Chinese scarlet lanterns. Sweetbrier stem and leaf
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: is scented of menthol and spices of the Orient. The
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: oaks stand regal in umber and damsen. Who that has
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: known October could ever forget how quiet the nights are
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: after frost. Chapter eleven November traits. By the time November comes,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: the year is used to the caprices of the sun,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: and no longer frantically brings out flowers for his gaze
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: or hides them in hurt surprise from his indifference. Now
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: the year is resigned, untroubled, of hope. Far from impatient April,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: with her craving and effort experienced month, November waits ready
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: to face the snows. She wraps up the buds too
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: warmly for sleeve to pierce their overcoats, comforts the roots
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: in the woods with mats of wrecked leaves, spreads a
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: little jewelry of frost as a warning before the black
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: frosts come, and for all else lives in the moment.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: November has been through this before, but sometimes in a reverie,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: she delights the blue jays and persistent wild asters. By
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: a day of Indian summer. There has been a great
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: deal of ill feeling about Indian summer, and the kinder
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: Way is not to purse secute those who have since
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: youth believed and will maintain forever that it comes in October.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: Victims of this perverted fancy, they will go through life
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: calling the first hot spell after Labor Day Indian summer
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: every fall. One explains to them that this brief season
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: of perfection may come as latest Thanksgiving, but the very
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: next year they will be heard to murmur under frostless skies,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: well we are having our Indian summer. Let them go
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: their indoors way, or follow the deserting robins down to Paraguay.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: Indian summer could just as well come when the oaks
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: have turned forlorn if it wanted to. In truth, it
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: comes and goes by no means, exhausted in a solitary
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: burst of flaring sumacs, French Gentsians lighted by frost along
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: the rims, damson colored older leaves, and old yellowing pumpkins
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: perilously exposed among forgotten furrows. Now that the corn is
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: being drawn in, it goes and comes again, which is
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: its charm. The one time of year that cannot be calendared.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: There is in all the world a small choice coterie
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: of people who like November and March best of the months.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: And it must be admitted that these are often a
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: bit arrogant about their refined perceptions. They manage to look
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: down upon the many of us who prefer the daisy
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: fields to the time when hills take on the noble
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: lines of death. But whims of the worshippers steal no
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: splendor from the god. June has nothing to place beside
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: a moonlit November night, whose shadow dance of multiform boughs
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: is never seen. Through leaves, while shadows on the snow
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: are hard of outline. Unlike the elusive phantoms running over
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: Autumn's brown grass, June has no flowers so quaint, pathetic,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: and austere as the tremble weeds of November. What does
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: the golden rod, white with age care for frost all winter?
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: It will shake out seeds unthriftily upon the snow, standing
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: with a calm brotherhood who have gone beyond dependence on
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: the day. June's forests do not take a thousand colors
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: under a low sun. June's gray dews have no magnificence
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: of frost. June's incorrigible sparrows are not the brave, flitting
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: snow birds who sends we forgive once we hear them
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: chirping in a blizzard. June is a lyric, November a hymn.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: The squirrels have put away enough nuts to last through
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: the holidays, and after that they come out and get
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: something else. No one ever knows what they have gone
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: off with, most of the acorns, leaving the fairies their
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: usual autumn supply of cupless saucers. No birds worth fighting
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: with are left for the crows will not notice them,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: so they go for the chipmunks. Sometimes at the wood's edge,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: a bird that came only with the blossom, and that
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: should long since have gone, sits lost half, grotesque on
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: a stark twig, spent and beautiful singer, belated by perversity
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: or by untimely faintness of wing. The muskrat's winter house
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: is ready, But no happy quiet, such as his good
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: citizenship deserves, is in store for him, because soon the
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: trappers will begin their patrol of the forest, and his skin,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: called wild Patagonian ox, the exquisite new fur will bring
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: a good price. Emotional wild geese still pass overhead in
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: the dawns and sunsets. The crows can scarcely conceal their
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: amusement what nonsense to be always coming or going. The
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: crow does not remain in the pale north simply out
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: of devotion to us. He is above more vicissitudes. Behind
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: his demoniac eye dwells a critique of humanity which he
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: would not be bothered to utter if he could. The
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: soul of the satirist once abode in a crow, forsaken
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: nests and rattling reeds along the stream pools, in the
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: hollows edged with thin ice, ragged leaves clutched at by
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: the winds, desperate buds of hepatica, and cowslip where a
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: sloping bank catches warmth at noon, fences stripped of vines
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: and ghostly with dead clematis, a few frozen apples swinging
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: on the top boughs, trampled fields and pelting rain, and
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: with it all a grandeur more serene than melancholy. November's
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: lovers are not perverse declaring this. They see half indicated
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: colors and hear low sounds. They love the mellow light
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: better than the blaze of rich July, and they are
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: loyal to November because she speaks in quiet tones not
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: heard through the eagerness or snow silence of other months.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: It is the sentimentalist who sees only gloom and the
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: weariness of departure. Now November is ruddier than many a
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: day of spring, and the sharper air forbids langer Indian summer.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: Her gift, and our most fleeting season is like the
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: autumn ecstasy of the partridge, passionate and irresistible, but not
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: ending in despondency, because he knows it will return, and
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: it is like joy, in that it cannot be foreseen
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: nor detained. The Bacchanal may have dreaded November, not the Dryad,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: Chapter twelve. The Christmas Woods. The Southern woods hang their
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: Christmas trimmings high. Laurel and rhododendron, mistletoe and holly reach
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: up against the walls of tented bark our, northern forest
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: trail greens along the floor, and roped ground pine prickling
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: through the prone leaves, or a gentle snow appears as
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: a procession of tiny palm trees come north for the holiday,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: surprised and lost, but determined to keep together. Under the
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: haw bushes and over spruce roots wherever shade was thick
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: last summer. Partridge vines, twine, red buried wreaths, and the
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: little plants of winter green flavor and of that wandering
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: name hold their rubies low on the mountain side. After
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: the enduring snows have come, these glimmering fruits will be
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: requisitioned dug out by the furry owners of such plantations
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: on days when even covered roots seem barren of sap
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: and nuts should really be saved a while longer. Clumps
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: of sword fern beaten down by November, rains are round
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: green mats. Other ferns long ago were brown, but seldom
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: save in its sunsets and woodlands has December color. Ponds
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: fanged with ice, lie sullen or stir resentfully into white caps.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: The sky is stony and often vanishes in brooding fog.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: Uncloaked but courageous in their gray armor, the trees wait
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: tensely for the intolerable onslaught of the cold, the blizzard,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: with knives of sleet over the marshes. At the hour
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: of dust, when the bronze and topas are quenched passes
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: the breadth of foreboding. December acknowledges an unpitying fate. Anything
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: may happen. It is not the fireside month, softly white
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: outdoors and candlelight, within time of miracles. It stands expectant
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: and the thronging stars of the Christmas midnight, where a
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: restless look rutted paths answer harshly to the step. Snow
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: is a menace in the air, but lands beyond the
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: cities would be grateful should it hasten, bringing safety to
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: the soil and winter peace. Yet snow is a betrayer,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: a sheet of paper upon which the feet of rabbit, mink,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: and fox write a guide to their dwellings and to
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: the whole plan of their days. Snow for Christmas there
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: must be on the lighted trees and doors on our
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: far scattered similar cards, but save as a convenience to
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: the reindeer and a compliment to their driver, who cannot
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: create his stocking stock unless he is snowbound, and who
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: must feel sadly languid as he tears through Florida Heavens City.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: People would quite willingly manage with alum. Early in school life, however,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: comes the dangerous knowledge that nothing is so easy to
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: draw as Christmas Eve, a white hillside, a path of
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: one unchanging curve, a steeple, or a chimney with smoke,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: a fir tree, or a star. Thus snow eases art
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: for the credulous, who think it white, glittering under starlight,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: shadowed with purple, lemon, or deep blue as sunset turns
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: to evening, taking on daffodil hues at noon. Snow is
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: harder to paint, fretted with windy tracery and drawn out
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: into streaming lines where the gale races along by a fence.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: Snow is not on Christmas greetings permitted to be seen.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: The first snowstorm of the year should be sent from
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: Labrador on Christmas Eve and sprinkled impartially and ornamentally over
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: all the land. Then the Yule atmosphere, once provided the destination,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: should be confined to the rural clientele until the next December.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: For on street, the hoarfrost is indeed like ashes. But
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: why in somber justice should the far South pretend to
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: holiday snow at all? Why not Christmas cards pranked with
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: live oaks, alligators, lagoons and other beauties of an everglade
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: scene and inspiring escape from tradition and sentiment. For the
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: antlered steeds must prance above hibiscus flowers as well as
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: round the pole. Yet it must seem dull to hang
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: stockings by a fireplace that needs fire merely as a decoration,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: and never to have loved. A sleigh abandoned but still
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: no downcast company, slanting corn shocks not honored with winter
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: shelter stand patient sentinels in the field abandoned they may seem,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: Yet could you suddenly tip one over, there would be
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: a startled scurrying. For these are the choice snow time
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: residences of field mice, cotton tails, weasels, and meadow moles,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: not of course together in harmony, but in their separate establishments.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: Let the blizzard come. It only makes warmer a house
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: of corn stalks properly built, which bears none the less
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: some of the dangers of a gingerbread home. Passing cows
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: may feel tempted. Vermilion heraldry of the wild rose is
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: waved undim which Hazel, with her yellow blossoms, last flowers
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: of the year, gazes upon the bank wished shrubs about
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: her with a smile. Why she will not even sow
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: her seed until February. There is plenty of time for
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: hardy petals. Massed against the stern horizon, the forest stands
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: an unresponsive gray entered. The twigs are seen, sleek brown,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: dark red, and a fawn soft as the tan orchid.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: In towns. December shows the iron mood, but in the
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: open places, where pools of light and shadow lie, it
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: is a water color month, made fine with no gorgeous
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: velvets of all bottom, but hung with blending veils of
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: dawn mist and of new snow, so that the subdued
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: day rises in flushed, drifting vapor, like April's awakening, and
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: when the sun comes pale, we wonder that there is
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: no Summons in his light. End of chapters ten, eleven
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: and twelve, Chapters thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen of Menstreul Weather
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: by Marian Storm. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: Chapter thirteen, landscapes scene in dreams. The painter of landscapes
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: seen in dreams must be a memory that knows fantastic
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: woods and fairy sees, all strange to the waking memory,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: or else the artist is only a weariness with the
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: day just past that gives us in sleep sight of
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: the country, which, so mister Maum and other stories tellers say,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: is the real home that men may go their whole
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: lives long without finding, because we are not always born
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: at home, nor even brought up there, and we might
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: for years be homesick for a land unseen. Once beheld,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: the recognition is instant, and in the foreign place begins
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: a vita nuova relief and an intensity of living never
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: known before the new and familiar harbor came down to
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: meet us at the shore. So sometimes it is in
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: dreams recurrent and vivid, a scene of sheerest unreality will
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: take on an earthly air. Or landscapes flamboyantly exotic will
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: hold the peace denied by every country. It has been
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: our daily fortune to know dream landscapes come back again
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: and again, as if they waited there forever substantial, and
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: we were the transient comers. Some in ethered dreams shrink
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: always from the same green waves, the same black open mine.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: And two have now and then been found who saw
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: on sleep journeys places that words repictured curiously alike. The
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: fantasies may be patchwork of poems, plays, and paintings long forgotten,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: but when they rise in their compelling fusion, they owe
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: no debt to the lumber attic of the subconscious. The
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: world they fashion is their own, and they do offer,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: by their ethereal pathway, a compensation for the insufficiencies of life.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: There is a long, uncurving sea strand, whose gray immensity
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: of sands lies smooth four miles along the upper beach,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: but is feathered near the water by the stroking of
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: little after waves, and draped unendingly with umber bands of
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: kelp here as in no place seen. The seaweed laces
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: are edged with colors ground in unlighted depths, as if
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: the tide cast carvings of lap is leisurely and fell
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: spar up with the argent pebbles, and all the drifting
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: algae are encrusted with yellow shells. Southward, the palms climb
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: up until they make a green horizon, and their unnatural
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: fronds sink down again, like green chiffon that veils the
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: entrance to the pensive forests, binds with scented flowers as
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: intangible as fog, creep over root and trunk, and among
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: them now and then, with soundless foot and molten eye,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: a leopard wines. Perpetual sunset wanes and glows behind the palms.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: There is never any wind. The violence of the ocean,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: the beast, the tempest is held in langorous leash, while
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: the treader of the sands goes on with unfelt steps
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: towards rocks, where the waters break importunate and sink moaning back.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: They hang black above a cave, and waves come in
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: to prowl, and snakes with scales like gems, twine back
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: and forth, glittering in the half light, with narcotic and
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: effortless motion. Until they with the rocks, and all the
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: scene fade. A tiny stream of Pixie's River slips from
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: beneath a boulder in a wood long known, and leads
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: through thicket glade and clearing to a terrifying land, desolated
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: by ancient fires and strewn with blackened stones and charred boughs.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: The place itself is a thirst, and the dreamer kneels
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: to drink. The tiny stream is dark like a deep water,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: and bitter cold, as if it flowed through ice. A
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: staff thrust down cannot sound its depths. A finger span
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: across and bottomless. Nothing could damn its flow. Old embers
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: at its borders are suddenly scattered when a gleaming hand
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: parts the current and waves back toward the way just traced.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: But the flame blasted firs have closed behind into a
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: forbidding wall. Other pallid fingers rise from the portal of
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: the abyss in warning gesture, but the narrow gulf opens underfoot.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: There is a town where gay people in white dress
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: promenade in a plaza shaded by orange trees, and they
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: are always humming tunes. Little white streets lead to shuttered houses,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: a glory of buginvilia overflows trellis and bower in splendid
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: war with the hibiscus edges and the dropping yellow fruit.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: Down the hill and over cobblestones, pursued by music and laughter,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: ministered to by odors of the lemon blossom. He whom
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: sleep leads here may go toward a lake of fluent amethysts.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: The way is past the market place, where brown women
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: crouch by baskets of brilliant wares, and vendors of glistening
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: lizards sit drowsily bent, And then at a step, the forest,
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: dense and brooding, is above him, and its low boughs
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: sweep the ripple of the lake. Immense leaves hang like curtains,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: and among them men with unquiet eyes move and hold
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: monotoned speech while they hew sparkling rock into monstrous shapes.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: They are circling round a pit. They cast in ornaments
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: of opal and dark gold, and garlands of venomous forest
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: growth gray and blood red, tied with withered vines. Cries
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: come from the pit, but the chant never stops. Marching
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: from a stronghold far up on a mountain of cedars,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: men in male come at dusk with standards flickering crimson
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: fringed with gold, down to a valley full of blossomed iris,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: where there is a wide pool with torches at its rim.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: Their flare streams out towards the circling cliffs. Each marcher
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: dips his golden flag into the quiet waters, and lights
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: rise upon the battlements above, as one by one, all
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: the black plumes are lost in the meadow's darkness, and
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: the torches burn low and fall into the pool. A
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: garden planted only with dark red nosterchiums that lift for
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: the dreamer's touch. A flower's velvet cheek lies filmed with
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: dew and fragrant as a noon breath from Ceylon spice groves.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: The Miracle of Color is spread along a hillside up
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: to a high wall of great gray stones, and inside
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: the gate is a house grown all over with grape vines,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: some borne down by blue clusters with shadowy bloom, some
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: by clusters of topaz and ripe green. There is a
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: pond among the grasses, where broad wan lilies float, and
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: purple pansies border all the walks. Very slowly, the paneled
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: door opens and the sun floods the central hall. It
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: is hung with silver draperies, and an old woman stands
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: there with a candle, mumbling and peering into a cataract
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: of light. Chapter fourteen, Hiding Places Childhood remembers a secret place, refuge, confessional,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: and couch of dreams, where, through the years that bring
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: the first bewildering hints of creation's loneliness, he goes to
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: hide and to rebuild the joyous world that every now
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: and then is laid in flowery ruins beneath the trampling
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: necessities of growing up. These little nooks where we confronted
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: so many puzzles, wondered over incomprehension, and looked into the
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: hard eyes of derision, abide caressingly for memory, who flies
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: to them still from cities of dreadful light. The need
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: for those small havens is life long. They are rarely
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: at hand in later days, but no locked door and
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: no walled chamber of the mind can take their place.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: The suns of midsummer, tempered by spruce boughs, flicker and
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: play upon a broad back rock, where fairy pools made
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: by the late rain in its grannies are frequented by
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: waxwing and woodpecker. Even though an intruder sleeps upon the
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: dryad's couch breaks, and sweet fern crowd around it. Tasseled
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: alders are its curtains. Here one might be forever at rest.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: It is to such a place that rebel wishes turn.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: When the early grass and clover thicken in the pastures,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: or when the summer birds begin their slow recessional The
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: longing to lie upon a sun warmed rock in the
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: woods comes back desperately in April and October to them
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: who once have known that place of healing and stillness.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: Yellow bells from the wands of circling for scythia bushes
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: drop into a deep hollow lined with velvet grass. Pale
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: butterflies of newcome may flutter among the dandelions that bejewel
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: this emerald cup of gaea, and sometimes drowsy wings are
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: folded sleepily upon a gold rosette. Light beams pass and
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: repass in jubilants over the grass blades. The sun is
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: enchanted in the clear yellow of the flowers. Glints, movements, gayety,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: and withal peace and silence were in that place of
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: exultant color and radiant life. It was a rare spot
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: and unvisited save by birds in quest of screening branches
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: for their nests, and perhaps by someone who hid there
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: and always had to laugh before he left. Around face
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: of soft sward is guarded by strawberry shrub and by
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: the bridle wreaths by rhea that droops white branches lowly
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: to the ground. Here you could lie on a moonlit
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: summer night with arms outstretched and face pressed into the
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: soft grass, and beneath your fingers you could feel the
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: world turn on and on immensely, soothingly, and everlastingly. The
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: only sound the bat's wings above, or a baby robin
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: protesting musically at the slowness of the night's divine pace.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: Here the smell of the sod is keen and sweet.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: Here dew would cool a throbbing brow. Here the undertones
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: of earth vibrate through the body and all its nerves
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: strung to intense perception, yet would be wrapped in persuasive peace.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: An old balmagilead tree growing on a hillside kindly lets
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: down one mighty lip as pathway to a leafy hiding
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: place incomparably remote and dimly lighted even at noon. The
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: branches make an armchair far back against the trunk, and
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: that glossy foliage, always cool, swishes like waves at low tide.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: The tree has much to tell, but never an intrusive word.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: You may sit there with a book or in the
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: distracting company of secret happiness or tears, and it will
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: ignore you, courteously, going on about its day long task
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: of gathering greenness from the sun, and only from time
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: to time touching your hand with an inquiring leaf. Sometimes
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: a red squirrel looks in and departs in shop fashion
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: through the air. Sometimes the sheep pass far below on
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: their way home, But the refuge is secure, and the
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: balmagileads cradling arms wait peacefully to hold an asking child.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: A foamy brown brook that flashes and dallis is captured
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: and breaks free again. Down along the mountain has been
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: coaxed by some wood nemph to furnish sparkling water for
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: her round rock bath. Dutifully it pours in every moment,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: its curvetting freshness, bringing now and then the tribute of
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: a laurel leaf or a petal from some flower that
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: bent too close. This bath is jammed with glittering quartz
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: and floored with red and white pebbles. Gray mosses broider
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: it where the sun lies, and dark green where the
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: water drips. The NMPH has been at some panes to
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: train the five finger ivy and night shade heavily all about,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: and the great breaks carpet the path her gleaming feet
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: must tread at sunrise. Now at noon you may come there,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: troubling no living drapery, and dangle your feet over the
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: moss into the dimple coolness of that mountain pool. A
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: trout might start in, a red lizard appear upon the ledge,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: but nothing else. The wild cherry clusters hang within reach.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: In a corner of a meadow, where dispassionate cows graze
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: and snort scornfully at the collie who comes to get them.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: In the late afternoon stands a great red oak that
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: has somehow inspired the grass underneath it to grow to
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: tropic heights. But between two of its wandering ancient roots
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: is short grass woven with canary flowered sancofoil vines. And
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: into this nook you may creep, screened by wind ruffled
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: blades beyond, and taste of the white wild strawberries that
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: reach their eerie ripeness in the shade. A woodchuck may
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: sit up and gaze at you across the barrier, or
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: a bright eyed chipmunk scuttle out on a limb for
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: a better view. They leave you alone soon, and at
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: twilight light, even the cow bell is quiet. A balsam
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: fur that grows on a boulder, leaning out half way
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: down a ravine hospitably spreads its aromatic boughs flat upon
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: the rock. After the inviting manner of this slumber giving
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: northern tree, The very breath of the hills is shed here.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: It is almost dark by day, and at night the
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: stars show yellow above the upper furs. The wind goes
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: murmuring between gray walls, and the sound of the stream
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: far down comes vaguely. Save at the freshet month, This
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: is the farthest hiding place of all. Only the daring
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: would find the perilous way to its solitude. Chapter fifteen,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: The Play of leaves for fox and partridge, fawn and squirrel.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: All the wood dwellers that run or fly youth like
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: the rest of life, is a time of stress and effort.
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: They have a short baby hood and little childlihood. Once
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: they begin to move, they must take up for themselves
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: the burden of those that prey and are preyed upon.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: They step from nest or den into a world in
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: arms against them, And while they sensibly fail to worry
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: over this, undoubtedly it complicates their fun. Baby foxes playing
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: are winsome innocence, but they have become sly and wary,
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: while lambs, colts and calves are still making themselves admirably
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: ridiculous in fenced meadows, and neither hunter hawk nor wildcat
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: makes allowance for the youth and inexperience of debutante game.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: It is different with little leaves. They are as playful
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: as kittens, with their dances, poses, flutters, their delicate bursts
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: of glee. Unless involved with flowers or with timber or
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: real estate. They are safe, not alone in winter babyhood,
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: but through spring and summer that minister to them with
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: baths of dew and rain and with the somnolent wine
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: of the sun. Only when old age has brought weariness,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: with winds and heat, and even with the drawing of sap,
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: are they confronted by their enemy frost. You will say
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: the caterpillars forest fires, but they are the fault of
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: man and an unanticipated flaw in nature's plan for letting
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: the leaves off easily. We brought foreign trees that had
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: their own mysterious protection at home into lands where that
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: immunity vanished. And so the chestnut has left us, and
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: apple and rose are threatened by foes whom their mothers
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: had not foreseen. Were it not for man's mistakes, the
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: leaves would have had an outrageously gay time by comparison
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: with the darkling lives of the creatures that move among
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: them and beneath them all winter long. In its leaf bud,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: the baby tulip drowses curled up tight. It is completely
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: ready to spring, full formed into the light, as soon
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: as the frost line has been driven back by the
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: triumphant glances of the sun. And there it dips and
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: laughs and nods, and sometimes goes quite wild. When a
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: running breeze comes by at the hour wherein a morning
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: makes opals of July's heavy dew, the poplars, the maidenhair
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: trees shake out spangles, then the maples show their silver sides.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: Always the forest lives and breeze, But when the new
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: leaves come, it draws long, shuddering breaths of delight. Whoever
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: has dwelt with trees, knows how differently the small leaves
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: of may talk from the draped and weighted boughs of august.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: Stepping along the rustling wood road, you can hear the
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: reveries of the leaves around you. They whisper and sigh.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: In youth, they reach out to touch the friendly stranger's cheek.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: In summer, they hang their patterned curtains tenderly about him,
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: in a silence made vocal only by a teasing gale.
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: In autumn, they are loud beneath his tread. Snow alone
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: can hush them. When they are voiceless. They are dead
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: at last, but already their successors, snugly cradled and blanketed
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: with cotton, are being rocked to sleep upon the twigs.
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: The rippling, shimmering birch upon a windstroked hill talks with
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: falling cadence like a chant. The naiad willow arching lowland
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: brooks speaks as water. Very secretly. The oak should not
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: be silent. With his story of many days to tell,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: and keeping his leaves throughout the snow time, his speech
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: is perpetual. Only the pines and kindred evergreens are now
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: and then melancholy, as if the new needles and leaves
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: looked down upon the carpet below, forever thickened of those
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: whose hold grew faint. Leaves of cherry and apple born
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: into a world of tented blossoms are gay to the last.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: The sprays of locust leaves that keep their yellow green
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: until the sober tree flowers into clustered fragrance of white
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: arboreal sweet peas whisper by night and day, of the
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: bats and tree toads that dwell in their channeled and
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: vine loved bark. The sycamore's voice is cool, toned and light,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: but the mountain ash murmurs low and low. The beach
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: watching leaves adrift on November winds. There comes the memory
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: of Stephenson's song of another ended life. Of days they
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: lived the better part. April came to bloom and never dim.
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: December breathed its killing chill, But the tree that wore them,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: standing in stripped starkness that month, if stark means strong,
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: shall enter dazzling splendors when the days of ice storms come,
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: that miracle of lucent grayness and elm in the morning sun,
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: when every branch and every smallest twig is cased in ice,
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: outdes its green enchantments of June. It is more beautiful
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: than a tree of coral. It is the color of
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: pussy willows made to shine. It is as gray as sunrise,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: cobwebs on the grass, as starlight on dew. Its branches
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: tossed by January clash sword on delicate sword, or left quiet.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: The elm stands like a pensive dancer and swings against
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: one another. Long strands of crystal beads. And in the city,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: little ice sheathed maples along an avenue, glistening under white
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: arc lights, surpass the changing lusters of gray enamel. Trees
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: robed in ice are the very home of light of fire,
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: frozen fast in water, and turned pale between the going
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: and coming of the leaves. The sky is background for
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: the cunning lace work of twigs, where it always may.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: We should never see how finely wrought is the loom
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: upon which those leafly embroideries are woven. In autumn, the
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: design is more austere, the colors show more somber. But
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: when the march branches flush with sap, and the buds
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: waking put forth hesitant green fingers that infinitely complex tracery
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: of the twigs is a spring charm, as moving as
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: the perfume of the thorn, outlined against a sunset. It
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: foretells in beauty the months when the leaf chorus will
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: sound with the birds. End of chapters thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter sixteen and seventeen of Minstrel Weather by Marian Storm.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter sixteen,
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: the Brown Frontier. One warm March noon, a hushing wing
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: is lifted from the piping nest of earth. Voices of forest, floor, tree, trunk,
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: and low ground break forth, never to be silent again
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: until Thanksgiving. Weather finds a muted world. Croon and murmur
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: from the swaying grasses, brief lyrics from the top of
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: the thorn, a sunrise chant from the bee tree, rise
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: and fall through all the hours of dew and light
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: intense in the sun rusted fields, climbing to an ecstatic
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: swan song when frosts hover close. Whoever walks through middle
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: realms of the woods, never lying on the mosses, nor
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: winning to skyward branches of the trees, has not shared
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: the Earth's most ardent. The pensive songs of bird sings
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: merely for himself. His impulsive goalless flights and rarer still
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: the industry and traffic at the roots of growth. The
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: epic of the ground cricket follows pickering frog and cicada cricket.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: That earliest invisible singer asks only a little warmth in
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: the waters of the pond to melt the springs of
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: frozen song. He comes with ladies, dresses, pussy willow and
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: unfurling lily pads. The cricket, sleepy voiced in the august afternoon,
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: grows gay at twilight, and does his best when the
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: firefly and bat are abroad, darting out from the creeper
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: veiled bark and setting sail upon the placid air. Locusts
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: play persistently a g string out of tune, until when
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: the first golden rod appears above the yarrow, the overwhelming
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: night chorus of the Katie diids is heard, lifted bravely
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: again and again within the domains of autumn, not quenched
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: before the bittersweet berry and the chestnut fling open portals
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: and surrender to the cold. Little they know of trees
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: who have not seen spruce and larches against the deep
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: october sky. Looking straight up from a yielding club moss pillow,
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: The outlines and colors of the quiet branches are shown
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: most memorably. Upon the vault of that arching lapis lasurely roof,
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: draped with floating chiffon. Of the clouds climb up among
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: the boughs, and the carbon quality is gone. They are
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: dim and soft. You must go close to earth to
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: behold tree top forms. The supine view is magical, revealed
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: an uncanny splendor by the death of verdure. Brilliant and
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: evil fungi come from the dark mold in fall orange
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: and copper, vermilion and cinnabar, dwelling as vampires upon trees
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: brought low somewhere the terra cotta of the alert little
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: lizards that inquisitive as squirrels will lift their heads from
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: bark or stone and give back gaze for gaze, as
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: leaves that came from the sap of roots go back
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: to the roots in ashes. So ants take care that
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: fallen oak shall be transformed into the soil from which
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: young oaks will spring, and brown dust when they have ended,
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: is all that abides of the tallest tree among them
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: past the bobbing, glistening beetles. This immortal and thronging activity
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: of the loam can be heard if you bend low
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: enough and listen long. When the air is frost clear,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: fairy landscapes hidden since spring came with mists and masking
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: leaves rise with an effect of unbeheld creation. Small pools appear,
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: and avenues among the bracken that still wave banners of
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: chestnut and gold. The lonely homes of ground nesting birds grow.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: Visible trinkets are scattered as the forest makes ready for night.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: Tiny cones abandoned snail shells and feathers which the woodpecker
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: and oriole dropped when they took leave. The sun dapples
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: with yellow. The partridge haunts where once droop films of
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: maidenhair fern. The home that the squirrel built for his
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: summer idol is shattered by the winds aloft and falls
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: to earth with other finished things. The feathery rack of
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: cattails sails the waters and is hung upon the grasses
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: of the marsh. Fallow fields spread a tangle of livid stems,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: but jewels lie in the wood road for berries. The
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: last harvest are shaken down by bird gleaners from vine
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: and shrub, where they hang in festal plenty, so that
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: all hardy creatures that do not fly from winter to
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: the south or to an underground nirvana, may here find reward.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: Dark blue beads drop from the woodbine. The rose keeps
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: her carmine caskets full of other roses, but the bayberry
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: is generous with dove gray pebble beads, which hazel reversing seasons.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: Like the eccentric trout, who after all, probably enjoys the
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: solitude at the stream heads after the other fish have gone,
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: sends wide her mysterious fusillate, and that too finds its
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: aim in the floor of the forest, life more remote
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: than that of snowfield or jungle beneath our tread, guarded
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: from our glances and our hearing unless we seek it out.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: The subtle cycles of the soil go on, everlastingly, alien
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: even to those who know in intimacy the meadows and
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: the woods. Vigorously though it toils, there is a piece
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: in the vision of continuity, delicately given. Most of the
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: singers at the mowing grass live for a day, yet
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: next morning the song as sends unbroken. Here on the
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: frontier between the world of the air and that within
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: the earth, Passports are granted back and forth. The red
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: lily is summoned from the depths. The topmost acorn, lifting
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: its cup towards the sky, obediently falls and passes through
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: the dark barrier to return when the life call bids
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: steadily go on arrival and departure. The gorgeous lichen is
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: hung upon the rotting log. White rue rises and white
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: snow sink. Fire demons split the rocks, and after them
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: in a thousand years comes blood. Root floods rush down,
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: and wind flowers and cities follow, and leisurely along spring.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: The gates that receive them part, and a legion of
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: new cowslips marches out Chapter seventeen far altars, guarded by
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: treacherous green marshes, whose murmuring rushes will close without a
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: change of gaidance. Over the despair of the unworned. In August,
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: there lives a scene of tender and appealing beauty. The
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: languid creek turned the color of iron rust with its
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: plunder spoil of the wild and impractical fertility of the
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: roots of bog and bracken pauses in a pool that
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: shows now brown now sorrel now satiny green, as the
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: clouds weight or hasten above, and the supple rushes lean
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: back and forth. This is the turney field of gorgeous dragonflies, emerald,
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: gold and amethysts. They hold resplendent play, sparkling above the
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: water like magnets of light, causing the placid depths to shimmer,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: and drawing the minnows from their sunlit rest. Even the
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: bird dog does not know this pool. No messenger more
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: personal than a prowling shot comes there from man. It
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: is a sturdy conceit that wonders why Nature should spend
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: her freshest art on treasure scene. She decrees invisible, as
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: if the mother of mountains tempest deserts, toiled anxiously for
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: the approval of a particular generation, keeping one eye on
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: mister Gray and the other on mister Emerson, in the
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: hope that they will justify her flower blushing unseen and
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: her excusable rodora. Nature is far too unmoral to bother
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: about rendering economists an account for her spendthrift loveliness. She
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: willfully deserts the imitation Sicilian garden, though she would be
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: well paid to stay and rolics in the jungle, clothing magnificently,
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: the useless snake and leopard dressing their breakfast in paradise plumes,
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: puzzling Victorian poets and badly scaring the urban manicurist who
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: returns after her first country vacation with decided views concerning
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: the cheerful humanity of streets compared with lodges in the wilderness,
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: where nature careworn and personal. Where would we turn for
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: consolation or rest hers is the tonic gift of a
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: strength that, underlying all life, does not pity or praise.
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: As in the cave of the winds, the most restless
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: spirit surely might find peace. So in the eternal changefulness
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: of the forest, under the touch of forces fierce or serene,
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: we find the soul of quiet. Because the powers at
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: work are beyond our control, control us utterly hold us
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: in an immense and soothing grasp, where thought and energy
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: are fused and contend no more So those who live
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: upon the ocean come to possess that which they will
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: not barter for ease. And so the timber cruiser shortens
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: his visit to town, they would not tell what they gain.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: Who relinquish readily the things for which others pour out
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: their years upon the ground that commerce may grow. It
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: is because words are not fashioned to speak what shapes
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: the wind takes the motion whereby mists climb after the
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: sun out of ravines, or how the tropic orchids lift
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: at daybreak among their fragrant shadows. Wings of ivory and
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: fawn that drooped against ferny trunks many days must bloom
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: and fade between you and the sound of human voices.
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: Before in the wilderness there can be surrendered to the
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: giant arms that forever hold the body, and to the spirit,
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: supreme and unemotional that has sped beyond the utmost outposts
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: the mind ever reached. But after the homecoming, when the
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: confused echoes of a swarming, blind humanity are lost in
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: the exalted quiet of wide spaces, the vast impersonality of
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: woods and plains, swamps, hills and sea takes on a
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: tenderness more deep than lies in human gift, and a
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: glorious hostility that calls to combat without grudge or motive
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: enabling because it gives no mercy. Challenges alike, the craft
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: of man and the strength of the hills, the exuberant
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: fancy of a less earnest day made air and fire
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: the dwellings of creatures formed like ourselves, and though immortal,
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: shod with lightning, guarded from common sight, they were afflicted
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: with our own vexations, our loves and hates. Nymph and Naiad,
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: Fawn and satur were always plotting and gossiping, and little
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: better were the subsequent gnomes and fairies, more personal and
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: cantankerous than persons, resorting upon occasion to divorce, tangling skeins
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: and teasing kind old horses. These were not the earth deities.
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: Earthies wear no human shape. No one has looked upon
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: the skyfire's face the pinions of the gale enormously they
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: have wrought, without regard for man, and sharing no passion,
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: yet yielding sometimes their limitless force to the mind that
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: soared with them in the age of winged serpents, in
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: the days when Assyria was mistress, they were the same,
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: holding an equal welcome for the boy and sage, unchanging
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: and unresting, free from mortal attributes of good and evil,
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: mighty and healing, as no half human god could be
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: therefore that lavish scattering of beauty without regard to man.
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: Therefore the wonder given to all who dare call to
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: them when far from other men. The disrepute of the
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: pathetic fallacy has come from making the forest sentimental, sentient,
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: beyond all doubt. Its lovers know. It is even as
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: water visibly rebels, warring with headlands and leaping over the wind,
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: and as it slumbers, dippling and caresses the swimmer. So
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: the woodlands are solemn and aloof or breathe to give
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: the open hearted their vast serenity. The nymph or fairy
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: rises at the bidding of imagination. But the everlasting deities
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: of the elements past our reckoning, elder than they need
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: no fiction. They are presences and accord communion. They can
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: be gentle as the twilight call of quail. They can
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: be indifferent and gigantic as the prairie fire and typhoon.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: But they brewed today as yesterday, over cities that they
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: will not enter, but which sometimes they destroy. They march
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: above mountain ridges and loiter among flowered laurel, impartial as
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: nothing else is, and in their dispassionate companionship supremely consoling,
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: offering for playthings. The Ripple and the Gleam end of
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: Chapter sixteen and seventeen, end of Menstreul weather by Marian storm,