"Now, O Lord, to thy great glory, we, as censers, offer to Thee the incense of our sweet-smelling balsam, strong, resinous and fragrant. 'Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name.'" Then the birches said: "Thy evening brightness illumines the heavens, O Lord! and in Thy splendors our small leaves golden are and burning. Now with our golden leaves we sing to Thee, O Lord, and our delicate twigs play as the strings of the harp, O good Father of ours!" Again the sorrowing cypress said: "Upon our sad foreheads, exhausted with the heat, softly falls the evening dew. Praise be to Thee, O Lord; brothers and sisters rejoice, because there falls the cooling dew." Amid this chorus of trees the aspen alone trembles and is afraid; for it gave the wood for the Cross of the Saviour of the world; at times it faintly groans: "O Lord, have mercy upon me. Have mercy upon me, O Lord." Again, sometimes, when the oaks and pines cease for a moment, there rises from under their feet a faint, modest voice, low as the murmur of insects, silent as silence itself, which says: "A small berry am I, O Lord, and hidden in the moss. But Thou wilt hear, discern and love me; though small, devout am I, and sing Thy glory." Thus every evening prays the forest, and these orchestral sounds rise at every sunset from earth to heaven--and float high, high, reaching where there is no creature, where there is nothing only the silvery dust and the milky way of the stars, and above the stars--God. At this moment the sun hides his radiant head in the far-distant seas; the farmer turns upward his plowshares and hastens to his cottage. From the pastures return the bellowing herds; the sheep raise clouds of the golden dust. The twilight falls; in the village creek the well sweeps; later the windows shine, and from the distance comes the barking of the dogs.