Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/262

 and are the most wonderful things of all. If the gray-stone buildings were of yellow gold and of emeralds and brilliants, the green country would be no fairer and no less exquisitely fair, and the blue of the water would go no deeper into the heart and no less deep, and the pale clouds would float high and gently with the same old-time mystery. And the centuries they know are countless.

The natural things are the same in Massachusetts—but here they seem someway even older. You feel the breath of the very long-ago among the wildness of green—as if only human beings had come and gone, but it had never changed its smallest twig or grass-blade. It seems but waiting, and its patience in the waiting is without end.

Away on the other side of the tree-covered mountain I have seen a flat, gently-curved, country road with the sun-