So I stripped off branches of the trees,
and gathered bundles of fern and bracken, with which to conceal awhile
their bones from wolf and fowl. And him whom I had begun to love I
covered last, desiring he might but return, if only for a moment, to
bid me his strange farewell.
This done, I pushed through the undergrowth from the foot of the sunny
cliffs, and after wandering in the woods, came late in the afternoon,
tired out, to a ruinous hut. Here I rested, refreshing myself with the
unripe berries that grew near by.
I remained quite still in this mouldering hut looking out on the glens
where fell the sunlight. Some homely bird warbled endlessly on in her
retreat, lifted her small voice till every hollow resounded with her
content. Silvery butterflies wavered across the sun's pale beams,
sipped, and flew in wreaths away. The infinite hordes of the dust
raised their universal voice till, listening, it seemed to me their
tiny Babel was after all my own old, far-off English, sweet of the
husk.
Fate leads a man through danger to his delight. Me she had led among
woods. Nameless though many of the cups and stars and odours of the
flowers were to me, unfamiliar the little shapes that gamboled in fur
and feather before my face, here dwelt, mummy of all earth's summers,
some old ghost of me, sipper of sap, coucher in moss, quieter than
dust.
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