The Open Air 



the woods of Somerset, I recognised it immediately. 

 The plants that are really common common every- 

 where are not numerous, and if you are studying 

 you must be careful to understand that word locally. 

 My " sauce alone" identification was right; to be 

 right and not certain is still unsatisfactory. 



There shone on the banks white stars among the 

 grass. Petals delicately white in a whorl of rays- 

 light that had started radiating from a centre and 

 become fixed shining among the flowerless green. 

 The slender stem had grown so fast it had drawn its 

 own root partly out of the ground, and when I tried 

 to gather it, flower, stem and root came away together. 

 The wheat was springing, the soft air full of the 

 growth and moisture, blackbirds whistling, wood- 

 pigeons nesting, young oak-leaves out; a sense of 

 swelling, sunny fulness in the atmosphere. The plain 

 road was made beautiful by the advanced boughs that 

 overhung and cast their shadows on the dust boughs 

 of ash-green, shadows that lay still, listening to the 

 nightingale. A place of enchantment in the mornings 

 where was felt the power of some subtle influence 

 working behind bough and grass and bird-song. 

 The orange-golden dandelion in the sward was deeply 

 laden with colour brought to it anew again and again 

 by the ships of the flowers, the humble-bees to their 

 quays they come, unlading priceless essences of sweet 

 odours brought from the East over the green seas of 

 wheat, unlading priceless colours on the broad dande- 

 lion disks, bartering these things for honey and pollen. 

 Slowly tacking aslant, the pollen ship hums in the 

 south wind. The little brown wren finds her way 

 through the great thicket of hawthorn. How does 

 she know her path, hidden by a thousand thousand 

 leaves ? Tangled and crushed together by their own 



46 



