Earl H. Reed

“ THE MOON IN THE MARSH There is a hazy mist on the horizon where the red rim of the October sun left the sky-line. The twilight of Indian Summer is stealing over the marsh. There is a hush of vibrant voices and a muffled movement of tiny life in the darkened places. Sorrow rests upon the world, for the time of the requiem of the leaves has come. The red arrows are abroad; a flush of crimson is creeping through the forest. An elusive fragrance of fruition is in the air, and a drowsy languor droops the stems and branches. ”

“ It faded away in the gray of the morning and its watcher followed the steep trail down the side of Wud-ju-na-gow to rest.
Wa-be-no-je’s silent departure from the world left hardly a ripple in the marsh. It is human to cherish the hope, or fondly believe, that some store of gold, or grandeur of achievement—some sculptured monument, or service to mankind—will stand at our place of exit and be eloquent while the ages last, but the Waters of Oblivion hide well their secrets. Beneath them are neither pride nor vanity. ”

“ I felt again the haunting mystery that is over the marsh, along the river through the silent nights, and in its fecund depths, where pearls are wrought among hidden eddies.
Under the gently moving water was the dreamland of the reflections. The dark forests and the ghostly dunes hung low in the realm of unreality. Beyond them the Pleiades and Orion glowed softly in the limitless abyss that held the endless story of the stars.
The Ego, mocking the Infinite with puny dogma, in its minute orbit—a speck between two eternities—recoils in terror from the void beyond the world. ”

“ With steam shovels and freight cars he would level the undulating hills, and haul away their shining sands to a world of greed, where man does not discriminate. The wild life would flee from steam whistles that shrieked through the forests, and from smoke that defiled the quiet places. Belching chimneys and unsightly signs would befoul and deface the fair domain. With the beauty of the dunes he would feed a Moloch in the sordid town.
The peaceful marsh, and the river with its channel of silver light, would be invaded with dredges. ”

“ Countless tiny rivulets of transparent golden brown creep through the low land among the underbrush and mingle with the gentle current that whispers in the deep grasses, ripples against decayed branches and fallen trunks, hides under masses of gnarled roots and projecting banks, and enters the long sinuous ravine that winds through the woods and sand-hills. The ravine ends abruptly at the broad shore of the lake. The stream spreads out over the beach and tints the incoming surf with wondrous hues. ”

“ The dark morass becomes a dreamland. Through it stately legions go. Ethereal aisles wind through the trees. Cloudy walls rise along its borders, and beyond them are kingdoms in elf-land where fancy may spin fabrics of gossamer and build mansions remote from earthly being.
There is a life of the soul as well as of the body. We may ponder as to its immortality, but undeniably it is in the present, if not in a state to come. Hope grasps at a shadowy vision of the future that dissolves at our touch. Reason gives only the substance of the present, elusive though it be. ”

“ It glorifies dull winter landscapes with skies of infinite hues, and glances from twisted trunks of ancient pines on hills that defy the storms. It pulsates in star reflections that haunt the margins of wet 22 sands, and where crescent moons touch the waves that toss on night horizons. Its tinge is in the tender leaves and petals of the springtime, and in the flush of autumn’s robes. We see its elusive tints through vistas in the dusk, and in the purple mystery that fills the shadowy places, for the Dream Jewel is Beauty, and they who know not its holy light must walk in darkness. ”

“ Somewhere far out on the wind-lashed lake the turbulent seas and the storm played with a thing that had become a part of the waste and débris of the wide waters. Bascom’s god was in his leather wallet, but it was powerless, except with men. The winds and the waves knew it not. Greed, that dominates the greater part of mankind, becomes ghastly illusion, as the frail creature it disfigures blends into the elements when finality comes. ”

“ Unregenerate sinners and rejectors of Zeke’s creed were in the hands of an angry God. The scroll of earth’s infamy was being unrolled out of the clouds. “The seventh vial” was being poured out, and the hour of final damnation was at hand.
In the armor of his infallible orthodoxy, like Ajax, he stood unafraid before the lurid shafts. Serene in his exclusive holiness he was immune from the fiery pit and the shambles of the damned, and gloried in the coming destruction of all those unblessed with his faultless dogma. ”

“ In the autumn the groups of green conifers made dark accents in the expanse of red and gold that draped Wud-ju-na-gow’s massive form. Flowers grew lavishly along the steep slopes. The wild life sought refuge in the impassable thickets and tall timber. Hawks and eagles soared above the woods with watchful eyes and dropped down into them for furtive prey. Hordes of noisy crows circled over the tree-tops and around the wind-swept summit. Wolves and other marauders crept stealthily through the undergrowth at night. ”

“ Agile bats wheel and plunge noiselessly in pursuit of invisible prey. A few bulrushes in a near-by clump are slightly disturbed. The night life has begun to move in the slough, for it is nature’s law that it must kill to live.
The veil of mist thickens—the stars in the depths disappear—the moon’s reflection becomes a nebula of pale effulgence, and is finally lost in vaporous obscurity. Like the soft fabric of forgetfulness that time weaves over sorrow, the mist envelopes the tarn. Like wraiths of dead years, filmy wreaths trail tenderly and delicately through the solemn woods. ”

“ Spectral forms sit in council through the still nights, when the moon, red and full-orbed, comes up out of a sea of mist. Smoke from phantom wigwams creeps through the forest. Unseen arrows have touched the leaves that carpet aisles among the trees where myriad banners have fallen. 224
Our drift-wood fire glowed on the beach in the evening. Sipes piled on all sorts of things that kept it much larger than necessary. With reckless prodigality, he dragged forth boxes, damaged rope, broken oars, and miscellaneous odds and ends, that under former conditions would have been carefully kept. ”

“ We cannot be fully civilized until we are able to love these beautiful things in their natural habitats, without temptation to injure them.
To the botanist, the country is a treasure house. Almost, if not all, of the flora indigenous to the temperate zone, is found within its borders.
The flowers have a kingdom in the dunes. From the secluded nooks and fertile crevices, from among the shadows of the trees, and along the margins of the marshes and little pools, their silent songs of color go out over the landscapes. ”

“ In that suspended half consciousness that hovers along the margin of a dream, there seems to echo, out of some vast and awful chasm, a rumbling roar of rocks—from some abysmal smithy of the gods within the hidden caverns of the earth where huge boulders are being fashioned by giant hands, to be hurled up into space, to descend with frightful crash, and extinguish the life upon the globe. ”

“ The old sailors were in a state of opulent bliss. All of their desires were satisfied, except, as Sipes expressed it, “git’n even with two er three fellers I know of,” and happiness reigned in their simple hearts. 250
Out of the tempests of many seas, their battered ship had come, and was anchored in a haven of tranquillity. The languor that comes with satiety and completion was stealing gently over them. Life presented no riddles, and they were without illusions. So far as their capacity for enjoyment extended, the fair earth and the fulness thereof was theirs. ”

“ In the dreamland of the fire we may ride noble steeds and soar on tireless pinions. We see heroes fight and fall. Cities with gilded walls and bright towers, broad landscapes, enthralling beauty, leaves of laurel on triumphant brows, majestic pageants, and acclaiming multitudes, are pictured in the flickering flames. 160
On the little stage under the arch of the fireplace the puppets come and go,—the comedies and the tragedies, the laughter and the sorrow. The dramas of hopes and fears are enacted in shifting pantomimes that melt away into the gloom. ”

“ In the agonized recoil of frenzied fancy from the borders of the dream, the demonic ceaseless sawing, of the arboreal fiend in green, arrests the fleeting phantoms of the brain, and, like a doleful tuneless tolling of a fractured funeral bell—like a barbaric song of sorrow over fallen warriors—the ripping, rasping, resonant notes mingle with the night wind, and drown the harmonious hum of drowsy insects, that kindly nature has sent into the world to lull somnolent fancy into paths of dreams. ”

“ The winding sheet that lies upon the white hills hides the promise as well as the sorrow. The great mystery of earth’s fecundity that is under the chaste raiment of the snow is the mystery of all life, and to it the questioning soul must ever come. ”

“ They gleam in awful profundities and illumine a world of dreams. We may look down to them from the windows of a fair castle in which a noble spirit dwells, but beyond its walls we may not go. There are travellers in that dimly lighted vault, for dark wings blur the points of pallid radiance in swift and silent flight. Eternity is not there, for its constellations 70 will tremble and vanish with a passing zephyr on the surface of the pool. ”

“ The moods of Nature are manifold in expression 71 and power. In her infinite alchemy she reflects a different ray into every facet of the human soul. She echoes its exaltation, has sweet unguents for its weariness, and leads it upon lofty paths of promise when hope has died. ”

“ I wish that some gliding fluffy owl, or other rover of the darkened woods, would only pause a moment, and divest the bough of this green-mantled wretch, and then that some mighty ravenous bird would collect the people we know, who come and scrape on something that’s inside of them—lay a sound barrage before us—fret the air with piffle, and with sorrows all their own—and chant a woeful ceaseless cadence, like the green arboreal fiend, whose sonorous and satanic notes assail us from the bough. ”

“ He may have seen himself worshipped, not for his achievement, but for his wealth, in the domain of Vulgaria, where Avarice is king—where worth is measured by dollars—where utter selfishness rules, and the cave man still dwells, veneered with a gilded tinsel of what, in his foolish pride, he thinks is civilization—where vanity parades in the guise of charity—where cruelty and greed hide under fine raiment—where human hyenas rend the weak and grovel before the strong—where the bestiality of the Hun darkens the world—where the only god is Gold, and where the idealist must fight or perish. ”

“ He who is alone in the winter woods is in a realm of the spirit where the only borders are the limits of fancy. The big trees, like sentinels grim and gray, seem to keep watch and ward over the treasures that lie in the hush of the frozen ground, where a mighty song awaits the wand of the South Wind. ”

“ At night there are tremulous reflections of the moon among the thick foliage. 52 Strange ghostly beams touch the boles of the solemn pines and sycamores and filter into the sombre recesses.
The dramas of human life leave romance behind them. Its halo hovers over these darkened woods, for it was here that the beautiful Indian girl, Omemee, was brought by her dusky Pottawattomie lover, in the moon of falling leaves, and it was here that the threads of their fate were woven nearly a hundred years ago.
Red Owl first saw her among the wild blackberry bushes near the village of her people. ”

“ Today the Fireweed, that ever haunts the burnt places, lifts its slender stalk above the spot, and it may be that the soul of faithful Taheta lurks among the tender pink blossoms—a halo that may be seen from the dark waters of the distant marsh. ”

“ In years to come the wild geese may look down from their paths through the soiled skies, to the earth carpet below them, and wonder at the creatures that have changed it from a fabric of beauty to a source of evil odors and terrifying sounds.
The clam-fishing was unsatisfactory. The mollusks seemed to be about exhausted. Sipes and Saunders worked faithfully for several days, but only found a dozen or so, and none of them contained pearls.
“We gotta wait fer a new crop,” declared Saunders, who was disgusted with the whole trip and wanted to go home. ”

“ Suddenly we heard piercing shrieks, and the two maddened women fled wildly from the shanty in the direction of the buggy.
“I’ll bet they’ve busted open them insects!” exclaimed Sipes.
We waited a while, and looked for the other members of the party. We called repeatedly, but no answer came out of the gloom. They had been swallowed in the blackness of the night.
We then went to inspect the wreck. All of the old shipmates’ efforts to make the wedding a success had been “love’s labor lost.” The decorations were mingled with fragments of the stove and the splintered bunks. ”