96 IDLEHURST : 



touch of the stillness and gloom of an old church ; 

 but to-day the ever growing and fading gleams of 

 sun, and the din of an army of finches in the tree- 

 tops, made the little thicket less reverend than gay. 

 I sat down on a drift of leaves under a bank, looking 

 out to the hills in the north, and let the senses work, 

 the mind slackly following. Chaffinch and greenfinch 

 and woodlark answered one another incessantly ; 

 now and again from further holts came the cuckoo's 

 notes, or the clap and crow of a cock-pheasant. 

 Once a swallow shot through the little clearing, 

 trilling the song which, excepting the shriek of the 

 swifts in chorus, seems the fullest expression of joy 

 in liberty and motion. Then the breeze gathered 

 and soughed through the firs behind me, a crescendo 

 murmur, travelling through the clump ; the breeze 

 which in the Purgatorio 



" Di ramo in ramo s'accoglie 

 Per la pineta, in sul lito di Chiassi ; " 



" from bough to bough," with Dante's exquisite nota- 

 tion of nature. The farthest ridge of the distance 

 with its keen-edged clump on Camp Hill, showed 

 aerially blue ; between that and the foreground in- 

 cessant change worked. Here a cape of woodland 

 flushed out into clear yellow under the travelling ray ; 



