Did the giant rush die? Does anything die? Ages have seen the rushes fall and pass from sight, to wake to glorious light in the leaping flames. We see leaves fall each year and turn to mold from which other life-forms spring. There will be other poppies, next year, where yonder orange-red blossoms nod in the breeze. The waving grain, already headed out and bowing under its burden of raindrops, was but a few months since a mere handful of dry kernels. They were cast upon the ground, and they died, if that tossing sea of green is death. We see these things recurring upon every side of us, yet we still go up and down the earth demanding of prophet, priest and poet: “If a man die shall he live again?” ☙ A far cry from the little sprigs of scouring-rush in my hand? But Life is a far cry, from Everlasting through Eternity, and who shall say, of the least of these, its manifestations, “It is no good?” [Illustration: ❦] [Illustration] Down among the watercresses, an hour ago, studying the movements of a mammoth slug, I was startled by a shadow that fell directly across my hands. At the same moment there was an excited flurry and scurrying to shelter, among a tuneful mob of song-sparrows who, all unmindful of my presence, were teetering close beside me upon the tall mustard stalks that swayed beneath their weight ❧ [Illustration] Looking upward I saw, between me and the sun, a pigeon-hawk soaring on motionless wings in the freedom of the upper air. I watched him with a joy that had no touch of envy, as he circled widely against the sky, rising, falling, swerving, returning, with scarcely a dip of the strong, outstretched wings ☙ High though he poised, my thought could reach him; strong though his flight, my fancy could follow and outstrip him. He, high above the mountain-tops, gazed downward to the earth. His thoughts, his desires were here. To materialize them he mounted the air. With my feet upon the earth; with no palpable pinions wherewith to climb the ether, yet have I moments of being, more trusty than he, a creature of the sky ☙ Something of this ☘ passed through my brain as I watched the circling hawk. Once, with a flash of his strong wings, he made a downward turn and, swift and still, he dropped earthward ❧ Then, as if frustrated in whatever had been his design, he wheeled again and climbed as swiftly up the air ☙