46 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



feeling the crop with his hand one side, and opening it 

 with his walking-stick the other. It rolls the wavelets 

 carelessly as marbles to the shore ; the red cattle redden 

 the pool and stand in their own colour. The green cater- 

 pillar swings as he spins his thread and lengthens his 

 cable to the tide of air, descending from the tree ; before 

 he can slip it the whitethroat takes him. With a thrust 

 the wind hurls the swift fifty miles faster on his way ; it 

 ruffles back the black velvet of the mole peeping forth 

 from his burrow. Apple bloom and crab-apple bloom 

 have been blown long since athwart the furrows over the 

 orchard wall ; May petals and June roses scattered ; 

 the pollen and the seeds of the meadow-grasses thrown 

 on the threshing-floor of earth in basketfuls. Thistle 

 down and dandelion down, the brown down of the goat's- 

 beard ; by-and-by the keys of the sycamores twirling 

 aslant — the wind carries them all on its back, gossamer 

 web and great heron's vanes — the same weight to the 

 wind ; the drops of the waterfall blown aside sprinkle the 

 bright green ferns. The voice of the cuckoo in his season 

 travels on the zephyr, and the note comes to the most 

 distant hill, and deep into the deepest wood. 



The light and fire of summer are made beautiful by 

 the air, without whose breath the glorious summer were 

 all spoiled. Thick are the hawthorn leaves, many deep 

 on the spray ; and beneath them there is a twisted and 

 intertangled winding in and out of boughs, such as no 

 curious ironwork of ancient artist could equal ; through 

 the leaves and metal-work of boughs the soft west wind 

 wanders at its ease. Wild wasp and tutored bee sing 

 sideways on their course as the breeze fills their vanes ; 

 with broad coloured sails boomed out, the butterfly drifts 

 alee. Beside a brown coated stone in the shadowed 

 stream a brown trout watches for the puffs that slay the 



