"Come to the woods, in whose mossy dells,
A light all made for the poet dwells;
A light, coloured softly by tender leaves,
Whence the primrose a mellower glow receives.
"The stock-dove is there in the beechen tree,
And the lulling tone of the honey-bee;
And the voice of cool waters, 'midst feathery fern,
Shedding sweet sounds from some hidden urn."
"I went up with the dogs this morning," I said one evening, "to see how
my woodland study looked in winter."
"You did not do any work?"
"I did indeed. It was so warm under my great oak-tree, that I could not
resist the temptation of sitting down and writing fully half a chapter
of a new tale."
It is a clear sunny day, with the ground flint-hard with the frost. The
leaves are still on the bramble-bushes, so dear to school-children when
autumn days ripen the big luscious-looking black and bronze berries.
The leaves also closely cover yonder little beech-trees. The furze is
of a dark olive-green colour, covered here and there with patches of
white, where the hoar-frost lodges, and with spots of brightest yellow
when the blossoms still flourish. There are buds on the leafless
twiglets of the oak, though the tree still soundly sleeps, and the
ground is everywhere covered with moss and broken mast. Not a sound is
there to break the stillness of the winter's morning, save now and then
the peevish twitter of a bird among the thorns, or the cry of a startled
blackbird, while now and then a rabbit goes scurrying across the glade,
stopping when at a safe distance to eye me wonderingly. How different
it all is from Nature here in her summer garb.
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