Give me the fragrance of the milkweed
at evening. Let me see the sunset glow on the trunks of the trees, the
ruby tints lingering on the boulder brought down by the glaciers long
ago; the little bats that weave their way beneath the darkening arches
of the leafy roof, while the fire-flies are lighting their lamps in
the nave of the sylvan sanctuary. When the afterglow has faded and the
blur of night has come, give me the old, childlike faith and assurance
that tomorrow's sun shall rise again, and that by-and-by, in the same
sweet way, there shall break the first bright beams of Earth's Eternal
Easter morning.
[Illustration: "THE FRAGRANCE OF THE MILKWEED AT EVENING" (p. 54)]
VIII.--BY THE RIVERSIDE IN AUGUST
When morning broke, little wisps of mist, like curls of white smoke,
were drifting on the surface of the river as it journeyed through the
canyon of cliffs and trees, dark as the walls of night, toward the
valley where the widening sea of day was slowly changing from gray to
rosy gold. Caught in a cove where the water was still these little
wisps gathered together and crept in folds up the face of the cliff,
as if they fain would climb to the very top where the red cedars ran
like a row of battlements, twisting their stunted trunks over the
brink and hanging their dark foliage in a fringe eighty feet above the
water.
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