Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/156

138 path under the window is a line of white running through the green grass. Beyond that is the brown hillside, brightened with a few pitch-pines; and then a veil shuts down upon the world, with a spray of bare treetops breaking through. It is the gray month in its grayest mood.

Be it so. I will sit at my window and enjoy the world as it is. This sombre day has a beauty and charm of its own—the charm of melancholy. The wise course is to tune our thought to nature's mood of soberness, rather than to force a different note, profaning the hour, and cheating ourselves with shallow talk and laughter. There is a time for everything under the sun—L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, each in its turn.

Now is a time to think of what has been and of what will be. Only the other day the year was young; grass was greening, violets were budding, birds were mating and singing. Now the birds are gone, the flowers are dead, the year is ending as all the years have ended before it.

And as the year is, so are we. A few days ago we were children, just venturing to