THE FAERY YEAR 



rising, or the water-flies, ephemerae and others, to 

 cease hatching, no one can tell. 



The earth-cloud has none of the fantastic and 

 quick-shifting imagery of sky-clouds, and, even in 

 the burn and flush of December sunsets, takes on 

 not a glint of gold light nor the faintest suffusion of 

 colour. Look right into the yellow and deep rose 

 in the west soon after four o'clock now, and this 

 earth-cloud, hanging under the fiery screen, is cold 

 and grey as ever. One might imagine it turned at 

 such a time to a shower of gold dust. But it is 

 impervious : nothing can illuminate it. 



A ploughed field to the north is the colour of 

 the full sainfoin crop, the stubbles near by are 

 slightly rosied ; whilst another field just ploughed, 

 through which one walks westward, is splendid 

 chocolate-brown, with gleams of light on every ridge. 

 On the heath the spent grasses are transformed and 

 transcoloured by this furnace of December. Tawny 

 tufts of hair grasses, so wiry and wasted by day, 

 with the sunset on them grow like the soft fur of 

 some animal rugs of sable spread over the heath. 

 The brushy tree-tops, engraved on the sky, fine as the 

 inlet of moss-agate, want no foliage for beauty in 

 this light, which seems to redeem everything from 

 winter except this earth-cloud. 



Yet stratus is so easily agitated that it may some- 

 times draw aside and lift when a man walks through 

 it. The faintest currents of air on a calm evening, 

 currents of which we are unconscious, will roll and 

 drive it. In a sheltered, damp spot it will shroud 

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