166 BENEDICITE 



When first I haunted this dingle, I used to 

 waylay persons passing near it, to inquire the 

 name of it. I said " It will have a name this 

 narrow gash in the ground ; if not for what it is, 

 then for what it is not. For plough never went 

 over it, and never will. Each time the ploughman 

 turns his team at the hedge guarding the top of 

 its long, steep slopes, he must look over into the 

 unprofitable hollow, and wonder what malign fate 

 led Nature to drive her own plough through the 

 level land, leaving this monstrous rut behind. And 

 the ungathered crop that grows there is slender- 

 shafted wildings, all column and crest ; for they 

 are like trees in a cage, close-packed, and can 

 grow only upwards. When they fall, they lean one 

 upon another, becoming natural ladders by which 

 one may clamber up to count the Ringdove's eggs in 

 a neighbouring fir. Oaks, too, are there, each in its 

 self-made clearing, thrusting out strong arms that 

 push aside the lesser growth, and will have room. 

 Within this columnar framework thorns and hollies 

 and their like claim the interspaces ; and lower still, 

 a wilderness of briars and brambles sprawls about 

 the ground, itself variously clothed with beds of 

 nettle, sedge and reed, and weeds innumerable. 

 And through it all there runs a crooked stream, now 

 losing itself in petty swamps where the Moorhen 

 gathers last year's leaves to make her nest of many 

 layers; now quickening between steep-cut banks 

 where the Kingfisher winds in central flight. 

 Emerging from the wood, it filters through a dense 

 reed bed, and widening into lake-like breadth, 

 embraces a willow-swept islet, ere it drains on to an 



