“The brown leaves on the oak-tree know them, and flutter faintly, and beckon as they pass. In the chattering of the dry leaves there is a meaning, and a cry of weary things longing for rest.
“ ‘Take us home, take us home, you soft air-mothers, now our fathers, the sunbeams, are grown dull. Our green summer beauty is all draggled, and our faces are grown wan and thin; and the buds, the ungrateful children whom we nourished, thrust us off from our seats. Waft us down, you soft air-mothers, upon your wings, to the quiet earth, that we may go to our home, as all things go, and become air and sunlight once again!’
“The bold young fir seeds know them, and rattle impatiently in their cones. ‘Blow more strongly, blow more fiercely, slow air-mothers, and shake us from our prisons of dead wood, that we may fly and spur away northeastward, each on his horny wing. We will dive like arrows through the heather, and drive our sharp beaks into the soil, and rise again, as green trees, toward the sunlight, and spread out lusty boughs.’
“They never think, bold fools, of what is coming to bring them low in the midst of their pride—of the reckless axe which will fell them, and saws which will shape them into logs, and the trains which will roar and rattle over them as they lie buried in the gravel of the way, till they are ground and rattled into powder, and dug up and flung upon the fire, that they too may return home, like all things, and become air and sunlight once again.
“The air-mothers hear their prayers, and do their bidding: but faintly, for they themselves are tired and sad, and their garments rent and worn. Ah! how different were those soft air-mothers, when, invisible to mortal eyes, they started on their long sky journey, five thousand miles across the sea.
“Out of the blazing caldron which lies between the two New Worlds, they leaped up, when the great sun called them, in whirls and spouts of clear hot steam, and rushed to the northward, while the whirling earthball whirled them east.
“So northeastward they rushed aloft, across the gay West Indian Isles, having below the glitter of the flying-fish, and the sidelong eyes of cruel sharks: above the canefields and the plantain gardens, and the cocoanut groves which fringe the shores: above the rocks which throbbed with earthquakes, and the peaks of old volcanoes, cinder-strewn: while far beneath, the ghosts of their dead sisters hurried homeward on the northeast breeze.
“Wild deeds they did, as they rushed onward, and struggled and fought among themselves, up and down, and round and backward in the fury of their blind hot youth. They tired themselves by struggling with each other, and by tearing the heavy water into waves; and their wings grew clogged with sea-spray, and soaked more and more with steam.
“At last, the sea grew cold beneath them, and their clear steam sank to mist; and they saw themselves and each other wrapped in dull, rain-laden clouds. Then they drew their white cloud garments around them, and veiled themselves for very shame: and they said, ‘We have been wild and wayward: and alas, our pure youth is gone. But we will do one good deed, yet, before we die, and so we shall not have lived in vain. We will glide onward to the land and weep there, and refresh all things with warm, soft rain, and make the grass grow, and the buds burst; we will quench the thirst of man and beast, and wash the soiled world clean.’
“So they are wandering past us, the air-mothers, to weep the leaves into their graves: to weep the seeds into their seed-beds, and to weep the soil into the plains: to get the rich earth ready for the winter, and then creep northward and die there. But will they live again, those chilled air-mothers? Yes; they must live again. For all things move forever: and not even ghosts can rest.