HOURS OF SPRING. 5 



and plants put on purpose for it. They were dead, the 

 whole race of them, and these their skeletons were as 

 dust under my feet. Nature sets no value upon life, 

 neither of minute hill-snail nor of human being. 



I thought myself so much to the earliest leaf and the 

 first meadow orchis — so important that I should note 

 the first zee-zee of the titlark — that I should pronounce 

 it summer, because now the oaks were green ; I must 

 not miss a day nor an hour in the fields lest something 

 should escape me. How beautiful the droop of the great 

 brome-grass by the wood ! But to-day I have to listen 

 to the lark's song — not out of doors with him, but through 

 the window-pane, and the bullfinch carries the rootlet fibre 

 to his nest without me. They manage without me very 

 well ; they know their times and seasons — not only the 

 civilised rooks, with their libraries of knowledge in their 

 old nests of reference, but the stray things of the hedge 

 and the chiffchaff from over sea in the ash wood. They 

 go on without me. Orchis flower and cowslip — I can- 

 not number them all — I hear, as it were, the patter of 

 their feet — flower and bud and the beautiful clouds that 

 go over, with the sweet rush of rain and burst of sun 

 glory among the leafy trees. They go on, and I am 

 no more than the least of the empty shells that strewed 

 the sward of the hill. Nature sets no value upon life, 

 neither of mine nor of the larks that sang years ago. 

 The earth is all in all to me, but I am nothing to the 

 earth : it is bitter to know this before you are dead. 

 These delicious violets are sweet for themselves ; they 

 were not shaped and coloured and gifted with that ex- 

 quisite proportion and adjustment of odour and hue for 

 me. High up against the grey cloud I hear the lark 

 through the window singing, and each note falls into my 

 heart like a knife, 



