XII. COVERDALE'S HERMITAGE
Long since, in this part of our circumjacent wood, I had found out
for myself a little hermitage. It was a kind of leafy cave, high
upward into the air, among the midmost branches of a white-pine tree.
A wild grapevine, of unusual size and luxuriance, had twined and
twisted itself up into the tree, and, after wreathing the
entanglement of its tendrils around almost every bough, had caught
hold of three or four neighboring
trees, and married the whole clump with a perfectly inextricable knot
of polygamy. Once, while sheltering myself from a summer shower, the
fancy had taken me to clamber up into this seemingly impervious mass
of foliage. The branches yielded me a passage, and closed again
beneath, as if only a squirrel or a bird had passed. Far aloft,
around the stem of the central pine, behold a perfect nest for
Robinson Crusoe or King Charles! A hollow chamber of rare seclusion
had been formed by the decay of some of the pine branches, which the
vine had lovingly strangled with its embrace, burying them from the
light of day in an aerial sepulchre of its own leaves. It cost me
but little ingenuity to enlarge the interior, and open loopholes
through the verdant walls. Had it ever been my fortune to spend a
honeymoon, I should have thought seriously of inviting my bride up
thither, where our next neighbors would have been two orioles in
another part of the clump.
It was an admirable place to make verses, tuning the rhythm to the
breezy symphony that so often stirred among the vine leaves; or to
meditate an essay for "The Dial," in which the many tongues of Nature
whispered mysteries, and seemed to ask only a little stronger puff of
wind to speak out the solution of its riddle.
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