You enter the realm of death and
the slain earth's dust alone sleeps beneath your unassured feet.
--Madame De Stael: _Corinne: Italy_.
EXERCISES
Discuss the following selections with reference to the impression given by
each:--
The third of the flower vines is Wood-Magic. It bears neither flowers nor
fruit. Its leaves are hardly to be distinguished from the leaves of the
other vines. Perhaps they are a little rounder than the Snowberry's, a
little more pointed than the Partridge-berry's; sometimes you might
mistake them for the one, sometimes for the other. No marks of warning
have been written upon them. If you find them, it is your fortune; if you
taste them, it is your fate. For as you browse your way through the
forest, nipping here and there a rosy leaf of young wintergreen, a
fragrant emerald tip of balsam fir, a twig of spicy birch, if by chance
you pluck the leaves of Wood-Magic and eat them, you will not know what
you have done, but the enchantment of the treeland will enter your heart
and the charm of the wildwood will flow through your veins. You will never
get away from it. The sighing of the wind through the pine trees and the
laughter of the stream in its rapids will sound through all your dreams.
On beds of silken softness you will long for the sleep-song of whispering
leaves above your head, and the smell of a couch of balsam boughs. At
tables spread with dainty fare you will be hungry for the joy of the hunt,
and for the angler's sylvan feast.
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