about the tops of them, so that their living load of leaves rocks
and roars in something that is at once exultation and agony.
I feel, in fact, as if I were actually sitting at the bottom
of the sea among mere anchors and ropes, while over my head
and over the green twilight of water sounded the everlasting rush
of waves and the toil and crash and shipwreck of tremendous ships.
The wind tugs at the trees as if it might pluck them root
and all out of the earth like tufts of grass. Or, to try yet
another desperate figure of speech for this unspeakable energy,
the trees are straining and tearing and lashing as if they
were a tribe of dragons each tied by the tail.

As I look at these top-heavy giants tortured by an invisible
and violent witchcraft, a phrase comes back into my mind.
I remember a little boy of my acquaintance who was once walking
in Battersea Park under just such torn skies and tossing trees.
He did not like the wind at all; it blew in his face too much;
it made him shut his eyes; and it blew off his hat, of which
he was very proud. He was, as far as I remember, about four.
After complaining repeatedly of the atmospheric unrest, he said
at last to his mother, "Well, why don't you take away the trees,
and then it wouldn't wind."

Nothing could be more intelligent or natural than this mistake.
Any one looking for the first time at the trees might fancy
that they were indeed vast and titanic fans, which by their mere
waving agitated the air around them for miles. Nothing, I say,
could be more human and excusable than the belief that it is
the trees which make the wind. Indeed, the belief is so human
and excusable that it is, as a matter of fact, the belief of about