Lazily rocking on ocean’s breast,
Something in common, old friend, have we;
Thou on the shingle seek’st thy nest,
I to the waters look for rest,—
I on the shore, and thou on the sea.
—Bret Harte.
FROM AN ORNITHOLOGIST’S YEAR BOOK.
THE HEART OF A DRYAD.
I.
It was an oak wood. A few hickories and chestnuts grew there, but the oaks ruled; great of girth, brawny of limb, with knotted muscles like the figures of Michael Angelo or Tintoretto’s workmen in his painting of the Forge of Vulcan. As to coloring, the oaks were of the Venetian painter’s following, every oak of them! In summer they were “men in green,” rich, vigorous green, with blue shadows between the rustling boughs; in early autumn, though russet in the shadow, the sunshine showed them a deep and splendid crimson, pouring through them like a libation to the gods of the lower earth, and to the noble dead, for the Dryad had a heart for heroes and all oak-like men.
Immediately before the great winds came, stripping them bare, and dashing silver cymbals to wild airs of triumph, they wore a sober brown, but it put on a glow, as of bronze or heated metal after a rain, when the sun’s rays smote them with shining spears smiting aslant with unwonted glittering. Under the moon or after a freeze they were all clad in steel, armor of proof, and mighty was the tumult, as of meeting swords, when the great boughs swung, and the long icicles fell upon ice below.
But these days were far off. It was summer, and a crystal brook slipped from level to level, singing its sweet water-song, and bringing cool water to bathe the feet of the oak which the Dryad loved and decked with green garlands. The orioles loved it, flashing here and there with rich red gold or flame-like orange on breast and wings and soft, velvety black on head and shoulders, splendidly beautiful as some tropic flower, they chose the end of an oak bough to hang their pensile nest. The male oriole shone in the sun, but his mate glowed with a duller hue, an orange veiled with gray, and mottled and spotted or splashed with white and fuscous and black, as a brooding creature should be that sits all day long amid the play of fleeting light and shade upon constant color. But both were beautiful in their strong and darting flight, and their labors of love.