Page:The heart of Monadnock (IA heartofmonadnock00timl).pdf/14

 Hugely massed to draw the clouds, shaped through the deliberate roll of bewildering centuries, by hammer soft as snow flakes fall, it draws at last the heart from the bosom of its lovers.

"Oh, wise man! hearest thou half it tells?"

High above tree-line it lifts its mighty ridges, now blue, now gray, now darkly purple, now rose-flushed and amethyst and malachite. From the bold peak five vast shoulders, clearly defined, fall away in different directions, and stretching between them are wide, greenclad hollows, sometimes sharp and precipitous, sometimes shallow and broad. These rough, wild shoulders descend, now in stately ledges, now in sheer precipices, till their jagged outlines are lost in the thick mat of spruce which overspreads the steep sides. These undaunted little trees, gnarled and dwarfed by the fierce winter winds and biting New England tempests, cling stoutly with passionate devotion to the mother-rock, send-