AN ENGLISH DEER-PARK. 289 



sainfoin (brightest of all on the hills), scarlet poppies, 

 pink convolvulus, yellow charlock, and green wheat 

 coming into ear. In August, already squares would be 

 cut into the wheat, and the sheaves rising, bound about 

 the middle, hour-glass fashion ; some breadths of wheat 

 yellow, some golden-bronze ; besides these, white barley 

 and oats, and beans blackening. Turtle-doves would 

 be in the stubble, for they love to be near the sheaves. 

 The hills after or during rain look green and near ; on 

 sunny days, a far and faint blue. Sometimes the sunset 

 is caught in the haze on them and lingers, like a purple 

 veil about the ridges. In the dusk hares come heedlessly 

 along ; the elder-bushes gleam white with creamy petals 

 through the night. 



Sparrows and partridges alike dust themselves in 

 the white dust, an inch deep, of midsummer, in the road 

 between the wall and the corn — a pitiless Sahara road 

 to traverse at noonday in July, when the air is still and 

 you walk in a hollow way, the yellow wheat on one 

 side and the wall on the other. There is shade in the 

 park within, but a furnace of sunlight without — weari- 

 ness to the eyes and feet from glare and dust. The 

 wall winds with the highway and cannot be escaped. It 

 goes up the slight elevations and down the slopes ; it 

 has become settled down and bound with time. But 

 presently there is a steeper dip, and at the bottom, in a 

 narrow valley, a streamlet flows out from the wheat into 

 the park. A spring rises at the foot of the down a mile 

 away, and the channel it has formed winds across the 

 plain. It is narrow and shallow ; nothing but a larger 

 furrow, filled in winter by the rains rushing off the fields, 

 and in summer a rill scarce half an inch deep. The 

 wheat hides the channel completely, and as the wind 

 blows, the tall ears bend over it. At the edge of the 



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