OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



anything more charming than to see the kids playing 

 among the flocks, as one drives along those roads of 

 haunting and mysterious beauty' under that sky incom- 

 parable in its gem-like purity / to see the shepherd in his sheep- 

 skin seated on a fence with his legs cross-bandaged, the shrill 

 pipe to his lips / to hear his wild strain and know that it 

 was all just the same a thousand years ago and more ? The 

 kids, as they leap out of the scattered flocks, are cut against 

 the blue as on some classic frieze / the tawny, melancholy 

 plain falls and rises and falls again till the hills amethystine, 

 snow-capped, close the field of vision in the far distance ! 

 The broken line of an aqueduct gleams as if golden. 

 "To be in Italy, 

 Now that April's there ! " 



Loki's Grandmother believes she would give up her 

 country and Villino Loki, and expatriate herself for ever 

 gladly. But Italy is not expatriation, it is the home of the 

 soul. (Loki's Grandpa says he quite admits all that but 

 that for a permanency he prefers his Surrey hills.) 

 The fires on the Campagna are rose-carmine as the 

 pointed flames pulsate upwards. Our fires here are only 

 just the usual yellows. Where is it that Italy holds the 

 secret ? Is it in the translucence of the atmosphere ? How 

 the sunlight there lies on a common plaster wall ! How 

 the stone flushes ! Just a little white Villino on a hill-side 

 stands in a radiance of its own, and is not white at all 

 but topaz coloured ! 



To-day, the fifteenth of April, has been as grey and bleach 

 ing a day here as we never wish to meet again. Even 

 the spears of the Narcissus are bruised and drooping. 

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