A Poet's Vision This is not the only reference to
lightning and the oak that I have come upon this week. In a little book of lyrics of really high distinction (The Magic Grape of Reginald Cripps, Bell) published some fifteen years ago, occur these lines
" Lightning will rive the oak, The stilted spire ; On them he spends his stroke,
On them his fire."
Mr. Cripps makes a suggestion that at any rate gives a dis- tinctive picture of the quality of three of our native trees.
He writes : " I should think that an 'oak with its stubbornly twisted growth, worries the electric current, which cannot make a clean break through—as might possibly happen in the case of the smooth- growing lime or young sycamore."
" Worried lightning " is as human a phrase as " kind gravity," a phrase heard from the lips of a highly instructed child making its way downstairs !
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