Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/73

Rh each other one quarter of a mile off, appears a mountain pass, so much nearer is it to heaven. We are compelled to call it something which relates it to the heavens rather than the earth.

Now at eleven and a half, perhaps, the sky begins to be slightly overcast. The northwest is the god of the winter, as the southwest of the summer. The forms of clouds are interesting, often, as now, like flames, or more like the surf curling before it breaks, reminding me of the prows of ancient vessels which have their pattern or prototype again in the surf, as if the wind made a surf of the mist. Thus as the fishes look up at the waves, we look up at the clouds. It is pleasant to see the reddish-green leaves of the lambkill still hanging with fruit above the snow, for I am now crossing the shrub oak plain to the Cliffs. I find a place on the south side of this rocky hill where the snow is melted and the bare gray rock appears covered with mosses and lichens and beds of oak leaves in the hollows, where I can sit, and an invisible flame and smoke seem to ascend from the leaves, and the sun shines with a genial warmth, and you can imagine the hum of bees amid flowers. The heat reflected from the dry leaves reminds you of the sweet fern and those summer afternoons which are longer than a winter day, though you sit on a mere oasis in