DOWNFALL OF THE YEAR 



the overcast morning or afternoon that this melan- 

 choly disarray of the first phase of autumn is driven 

 in on us. It is worst in the hedgerows. There the 

 elder bushes, clean stripped of their blue-black 

 berries by bird and field-mouse, have a pale, used-up 

 look. Some of the maple trees are dusky almost to 

 black, whilst the leaves of many maple bushes are 

 covered with a white mustiness, as are hedge- 

 woundwort leaves. Other leaves are smudged with 

 indefinite hues of decay, or are dying and shrivelling 

 up so that between the fingers they will turn to 

 leaf-mould. 



In the tunnel of green, where, a few weeks ago, 

 crowds of jewelled insects jostled each other over the 

 flower feast, there is a melancholy line, on either 

 side of the path, of gaunt or snapped plant skeletons. 

 This is what remains of the great cow-parsley 

 and the wild parsnip avenue mottled, dried-up 

 tubes, with hardly a seed still clinging to their heads ! 

 Here is autumn without recompense in colour. If 

 any hours in the lane or wood can be wholly sad, 

 and without beauty, they come now, when the tree- 

 green is in its dusky state. 



As the day wears on and the light thickens, we 

 cease to notice the dinginess of this and that plant or 

 leaf, and something, if only a suggestion, of the 

 blooms and fires of autumn appears. In this light 

 the beech tree a little way off is tinged with ochre, 

 and the pencilled hills grow dove-coloured. A single 

 elm turning from green to yellow might be an elm 

 in April turning from yellow to green. A sycamore 

 R 241 



