benediction to herself. Why pounce on a pleasure merely to prevent others
from having it? And she so tall and handsome!

The dog stands growling over a bone. He waits till another dog approaches.
Then suddenly he is overcome with gluttony, pounces on the bone and
crushes it between his teeth. Because the other dog is approaching.

It seemed as though this small event had to happen before my mind was
ready for the night. I awoke in the dark and felt within me the nursery
rhyme I had dawdled over so long: four rollicking verses about the juniper
tree.

To the top of the steepest mountains,
where the little juniper stands,
no other tree can follow
from all the forest lands.
Halfway to the hilltop
the shivering pine catches hold;
the birch has actually passed him,
though sneezing with a cold.
But a little shrub outstrips them,
a sturdy fellow he,
and stands quite close to the summit,
though he measures barely a yard.
They look like a train from the valley below
with the shortest one for the guard.
Or else perhaps he's a coachman now---
why, it's only a juniper tree.

Down dale there's summer lightning,