enriched and subdued; and then the soft warmth of fair and curly
hair is delicious. I was happy enough with them, in a sort of
surface happiness. The little waves at the top of the mind broke in
sunlight; but down below, the cold dark water sleeps still enough.
I left them, and took a long trudge among the valleys. Oh me! how
beautiful it all was; the snowy fields, with the dark copses and
leafless trees among them; the rich clean light everywhere, the
world seen as through a dusky crystal. Then the sun went down in
state, and the orange sky through the dark tree-stems brought me a
thrill of that strange yearning desire for something--I cannot tell
what--that seems so near and yet so far away. Yet I was sad enough
too; my mind works like a mill with no corn to grind. I can devise
nothing, think of nothing. There beats in my head a verse of a
little old Latin poem, by an unhappy man enough, in whose sorrowful
soul the delight of the beautiful moment was for ever poisoned by
the thought that it was passing, passing; and that the spirit,
whatever joy might be in store for it, could never again be at the
same sweet point of its course. The poem is about a woodcock, a
belated bird that haunted the hanging thickets of his Devonshire
home. "Ah, hapless bird," he says, "for you to-day King December is
stripping these oaks; nor any hope of food do the hazel-thickets
afford." That is my case. I have lingered too late, trusting to the
ease and prodigal wealth of the summer, and now the woods stand
bare about me, while my comrades have taken wing for the South. The
beady eye, the puffed feathers grow sick and dulled with hunger.
Why cannot I rest a little in the beauty all about me? Take it home
to my shivering soul? Nay, I will not complain, even to myself.

I came back at sundown, through the silent garden, all shrouded and
muffled with snow. The snow lay on the house, outlining the