Waterbury Democrat., 1901-08-14
PROMISE
By Eden PhilpOtts.


old trees stand disposed irregular ly. and where veterans have passed away, their places are filled by young, supple plants, whose youthful bear ing, trim uprightness and aspiring attitude contrast with the gnarled patriarchs around them and with those intermediate bearers, now grown to full vigor of life and splen- dor of fruition. Here the aged and adult mingle with the young, as in human colonies; and from my post upon a dead stump I mark the pageant of awakening displayed amongst them, and breathe new life from the abundance around me; new hope from all this promise; new heart from the music and the, color, from the gleam of million petals, the glow of the sun lances, the song of the birds, and the undersong of those little glimmering myriads busy in every open flower about the vital matter of honey and bee-bread.
 May is resigning her scepter, and presently it will be June; but May departs gloriously, and makes noble end in music and such happiness as only wild things know. She passes with a swan song of promise; and here alone seek it.
 Beneath the orchard spreads won- derful carpet woven of lush greens. sunlight and spring blossoms. The cuckoo flower and the daisy, the but tercup, the blue speedwsll and the budding seedbcads of many grasses are rippling 10 my feet, while where the orchard slopes towards a hazel hedge great sucw-Evhite umbel-bear- CTS rise above lesser things, and the dock and the burdock prosper, and the swords Of the yellow iris shine soft blue-green above running wa ter. The nettles, in vigorous com munities, look gray amid so much young verdure, and the last of the bluebells hang their heads where the first silver braids of the lady fern uncurl beside them. Huge cool shad- ows, almost purple, fall upon this carpet, and. growing deeper with dis fance, they make a sort of soft gloom through the regiments of the tree stems, where these spring upwards at all angles, of all shapes, inscribed with every fantastic ichen word that the Mother writes on ancient barks. In tones of ripe, messy green, of sill Ter-brown. and of silver-gray, the trunks arise, and in wild, perfect con fusion they thrust forth their boughs and main branches from the parent stems. They strike out abruptly; they start oblique; they spring aloft, then droop; they droop, then rise; e4 lovingly back to the parent stem. Their feast of form is partly hidden at this hour, and the wonderful har- monies of curve, droop. line and retic- ulation of feathering boughs, are all most draped in vernal garments.
 I think lichens love the rose folk, for here, as on the blaclxthorn and the whitethorn, they frill and tucker the baby tree as freely as they cling like a sere pail to the venerable an- cient To the very ends of antique boughs they push and climb, and now the crimson and snow of the flowers peep from among their en- crustations, even as in autumn the ripening harvest will gleam there.
 The apple blossom under direct sunshine is alive with pure light and wonderful blue shades, for petal shadow thrown on petal strikes a cool soft blue, by contrast against the gold and deep crimson of sunlit flower and ruby bud. The pageant passes from wealth of jewelly detail into dim splendor seen afar. A little way and the air comes between and touches the leaf and bough and blos- som mass, and brings all together and sweeps every line and curve with the sleepy. milky summer air. Against this curtain gleam the bees; the ftful wind moves lazy leaf tc let the sunbeam through; the black bird-who always seems to put imag nation into his song-hutes it un seen; the chafinch-cheerful, busy optimist amongst songsters-utters his little assurance that all is well with his world as need be. and hops to the gray home, like a ball of fchens. in an apple-fork. From the unfoldinE foam of hoary dwarfs and opriRh< adults alike comes promise. Early frnit is already setting. while i4tsr <5tez 4till hold their buds 1irht