The Lay of the Land

by Dallas Lore Sharp

The rill no longer sings,

But loud and long the strong winds strike

Ten million singing strings.

O’er mountains high, o’er prairies far,

Hark! the wild pæan’s roll!

The lyre is strung ’twixt ocean shores

And swept from pole to pole!

My meeting with that frog in the dead of winter was no trifling experience, nor one that the biologist ought to fail to understand. Had I been a poet, that meeting would have been of consequence to all the world; as I was, however, it meant something only to me,—a new point of view, an inspiration,—a beautiful poem that I cannot write.

This attitude of the nature-lover, because it is contemplative and poetical, is not therefore mystical or purely sentimental. Hooting at the owls and hearing things in baffling silences may not be scientific. Neither is it unscientific. The attitude of the boy beside the starlit lake is not that of Charlie, the man who helps me occasionally on the farm.

We were clearing up a bit of mucky meadow recently when we found a stone just above the surface that was too large for the horse to haul out. We decided to bury it.