Page:Eleanor Vere Boyle - Seven Gardens and a Palace.djvu/126

 Or again, those lines of haunting melody:

The broad stream on this side runs smooth like liquid glass. Almost one can see right across to the other side the rounded stones that underlie the water. Now and again a swift shadow shoots across, lost ere it can well be fixed by the eye, for big salmon lurk in the brown deeps and shallows; but trees bend over, and the shadow of their waving branches might well deceive the eye that is not a fisher's. The pathway just now is tesselated with little round yellow autumn leaves of birch, and mottled with spotted spoil of sycamore. What an ideal tree is the sycamore! Its shape may not compare in grace with elm or beech, yet how like the tree of some ancient classic idyll. Heavy-foliaged, and casting cool dark shade, beneath which the flocks gather from the noonday heat, or lovers tell the old, old story. Amidst of brighter summer greens, the sycamore will show itself massed in rich brown against the yellow