IDLEHURST : 



honeyed yet pungent, a heavy strong essence, conies 

 in the light airs across the universal atmosphere of 

 hay. This blending of elder and hay is to my 

 associative mind one of the most forcible notes in 

 the scale of the year. June by June it renews all 

 the old hayfields, the cloudless summers of childhood, 

 the poignant passages of youth, before the present 

 course of uneventful seasons turned all to peace 

 perchance too lightly accepted. 



The sun goes early, in a bank of grey mist ; the 

 waggon lingers for the last rakings ; Alice and the 

 ladies have left us. The men sit in luxurious ease 

 about the yard, and pass the beer while Bish and 

 Roser top the rick with trusses of straw against 

 chance of storm. Out of the south gathers and 

 rises a vast intricate system of rain, ashy grey 

 parallels tangled with diagonal weft of threaded 

 vapour ever climbing nearer the zenith ; lower down 

 looms a blank leaden vault across which hurry little 

 black drifts ; close to the horizon a clear hard 

 edge of cumulo-stratus cloud shows silvery-white 

 upon the dun shroud. The rain is coming, past 

 any doubt, this time. I give it till nine o'clock, at 

 farthest, as I contemplate the shapely cube of my 

 dozen tons of well-got hay. In this mind of 

 serene content there is a touch of commiseration 



