THE HEART OF THE COPSE 123 



leaves. A garlic bed, when the flowers have withered, has a 

 deceptive resemblance in all but smell to a patch of lilies of 

 the valley. Yellow pimpernel opens its golden blossoms at 

 the edge of the grassy rides, and the larger moneywort creeps 

 with its blossoms like rock-roses over the damper and barer 

 soil in the denser shadows. In sunshine and shadow alike, 

 bluebells are sprinkled among the vivid blossoms and herbage ; 

 when the copse grows dark, and most of the other flowers 

 die down, they spread their misty carpet far and wide, as in 



NEST OF TURTLE-DOVE 



the perennial woods. Partly owing to the colour of the 

 blossoms and partly from their being hung loosely on tall 

 stems', a sheet of bluebells is more unsubstantial and aerial 

 in appearance than any other carpet of blossom. It has the 

 lightness of the vapour rising from a lawn on an autumn 

 morning, and the colour of the spring sky ; the oak trunks 

 seem to wade in a blue mirage. In the latest years of the 

 copse's cycle, when even the bluebells grow sparse and lank 

 in the shadows, the cloistered depths become the sanctuary 

 of the brooding turtle-doves. Their slight black nests are 

 lodged at a height of five or six feet in the hazels and alders, 



