LADY DAY IN DEVON n 



where every year a pair of carrion crows 

 nest. They fly away as soon as they see 

 me, four hundred yards below they are 

 crafty, and leave nothing to chance. In 

 the stone hedges the celandines, flowers 

 much bigger than those around London, 

 shine like spilled meteor fragments against 

 their leaves. Primroses grow with them, 

 and the white blossom of the wild straw- 

 berry, and in places the stitchwort is in 

 bloom. A flock of linnets sings in a 

 hawthorn, a silver twittering of song 

 coming as the wind rests; with a rust- 

 ling of wings the flock leaves for the 

 bloom of the gorse which everywhere is 

 scenting the air. The apple trees in the 

 orchard close below are beginning to bud, 

 already goldfinches haunt their lichened 

 branches, now fighting with gold-barred 

 wings aflutter, now pausing to pipe sweet 

 whispers of coming vernal glory, when the 

 blossoms shall spill in showers of loveliness. 

 Afar are the Burrows, and over their sogged 



