The Open Air 



us, and reaped us. We are not like the same wheat 

 we used to be before your people touched us, when we 

 grew wild, and there were huge great things in the 

 woods and marshes which I will not tell you about 

 lest you should be frightened. Since we have felt 

 your hands, and you have touched us, we have felt so 

 much more. Perhaps that was why I was not very 

 happy till you came, for I was thinking quite as much 

 about your people as about us, and how all the flowers 

 of all those thousand years, and all the songs, and the 

 sunny days were gone, and all the people were gone 

 too, who had heard the blackbirds whistle in the oak 

 the lightning struck. And those that are alive now 

 there will be cuckoos calling, and the eggs in the 

 thrushes' nests, and blackbirds whistling, and blue 

 cornflowers, a thousand years after every one of 

 them is gone. 



" So that is why it is so sweet this minute, and why 

 I want you, and your people, dear, to be happy now 

 and to have all these things, and to agree so as not to 

 be so anxious and careworn, but to come out with 

 us, or sit by us, and listen to the blackbirds, and hear 

 the wind rustle us, and be happy. Oh, I wish I 

 could make them happy, and do away with all their 

 care and anxiety, and give you all heaps and heaps 

 of flowers! Don't go away, darling, do you lie still, 

 and I will talk and sing to you, and you can pick 

 some more flowers when you get up. There is a 

 beautiful shadow there, and I heard the streamlet say 

 that he would sing a little to you; he is not very big, 

 he cannot sing very loud. By-and-by, I know, the 

 sun will make us as dry as dry, and darker, and then 

 the reapers will come while the spiders are spinning 

 their silk again this time it will come floating in the 

 blue air, for the air seems blue if you look up. 



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