Golden-Brown 



indifferent to any circumstances to be quite thought- 

 less as to draughts and chills, careless of heat, indif- 

 ferent to the character of dinners, able to do well on 

 hard, dry bread, capable of sleeping in the open under 

 a rick, or some slight structure of a hurdle, propped 

 on a few sticks and roughly thatched with straw, and 

 to sleep sound as an oak, and wake strong as an oak 

 in the morning gods, what a glorious life! I envied 

 them; they fancied I looked askance at their rags 

 and jags. I envied them, and considered their health 

 and hue ideal. I envied them that unwearied step, 

 that firm uprightness, and measured yet lazy gait, 

 but most of all the power which they possessed, 

 though they did not exercise it intentionally, of being 

 always in the sunlight, the air, and abroad upon the 

 earth. If so they chose, and without stress or strain, 

 they could see the sunrise, they could be with him as 

 it were unwearied and without distress -the livelong 

 day; they could stay on while the moon rose over the 

 corn, and till the silent stars at silent midnight shone 

 in the cool summer night, and on and on till the cock 

 crew and the faint dawn appeared. The whole time 

 in the open air, resting at mid-day under the elms 

 with the ripple of heat flowing through the shadow; 

 at midnight between the ripe corn and the hawthorn 

 hedge on the white wild camomile and the poppy pale 

 in the duskiness, with face upturned to the thoughtful 

 heaven. 



Consider the glory of it, the life above this life to 

 be obtained from constant presence with the sunlight 

 and the stars. I thought of them all day, and envied 

 them (as they envied me), and in the evening I found 

 them again. It was growing dark, and the shadow 

 took away something of the coarseness of the group 

 outside one of the village " pothouses/' Green foliage 



