sumach, of nosegays of blood-red wild leaves, of berries and rose-haws, of stripped mahogany and silver twigs.
Jule sat close to Hannah. Their eyes, when they did not run out over the marsh, were fixed upon each other; his gaze abstract, as if it gleaned then from her sunken, unlighted face her wisdom and her peace; the dying woman's wistful and proud, who entrusted her existence, from that moment, to his thought.
The End
AS IT LOOKED THEN
In a sick shade of spruce, moss-webbed, rock-fed,
Where, long unfollowed by sagacious man,
A scrub that once had been a pathway ran
Blindly from nowhere and to nowhere led,
One might as well have been among the dead
As half way there alive; so I began
Like a malingering pioneer to plan
A vain return—with one last look ahead.
And it was then that like a spoken word
Where there was none to speak, insensibly
A flash of blue that might have been a bird
Grew soon to the calm wonder of the sea—
Calm as a quiet sky that looked to be
Arching a world where nothing had occurred.
