THE FAERY YEAR 



But the marsh can grow far less crude and harsh 

 in look as the winter night begins to touch it. 

 It then wears colours of a grand simplicity. Some- 

 times in January, during sharp frost, when the sun 

 has gone under the low hills beyond the river, the 

 scene will glow with warm colour. At one spot, 

 just above the marsh, where the river runs darkly 

 and highly burnished, the stars are reflected and 

 magnified in it ; and here, at the right time and 

 spot, one may see the seven stars of the Plough, 

 snow-white and sparkling in the water. But at 

 the point where it slides under the road bridge, 

 the stream increases its pace again, and its surface 

 is broken rather than burnished. It enters upon 

 the marsh, to flow away into the velvet of night. 



The rich night black of its banks in the fore- 

 ground ; the less determinable shade of dark farther 

 away on the flat expanse ; beyond, the grey hill 

 line ; above this, the great curtain of purple cloud ; 

 finally, the blue vault, with Aquila, the eagle, still 

 aloft ; there is nothing forbidding in this scene 

 at the marsh. So one can see it on many winter 

 evenings ; and so I watched it once early in January, 

 when a lonely star of the Southern Fish was quiver- 

 ing on the horizon to the south, one of the shy jewels 

 of our English horizon. 



Hot-blooded Trout 



The description "cold-blooded" hardly seems 

 the happy one to use of fish in the spawning 

 8 



