The Open Air 



the very next year was different even in the same place 

 that had been a year of rain, and the flag flowers 

 were wonderful to see; this was a dry year, and the 

 flags not half the height, the gold of the flower not so 

 deep; next year the fatal billhook came and swept 

 away a slow-grown hedge that had given me crab- 

 blossom in cuckoo-time and hazelnuts in harvest. 

 Never again the same, even in the same place. 



A little feather droops downwards to the ground a 

 swallow's feather fuller of miracle than the Pentateuch 

 how shall that feather be placed again in the breast 

 where it grew? Nothing twice. Time changes the 

 places that knew us, and if we go back in after years, 

 still even then it is not the old spot ; the gate swings 

 differently, new thatch has been put on the old gables, 

 the road has been widened, and the sward the driven 

 sheep lingered on is gone. Who dares to think then ? 

 For faces fade as flowers, and there is no consolation. 

 So now I am sure I was right in always walking the 

 same way by the starry flowers striving upwards on 

 a slender ancestry of stem ; I would follow the plain 

 old road to-day if I could. Let change be far from 

 me; that irresistible change must come is bitter 

 indeed. Give me the old road, the same flowers 

 they were only stitchwort the old succession of days 

 and garland, ever weaving into it fresh wild-flowers 

 from far and near. Fetch them from distant moun- 

 tains, discover them on decaying walls, in unsuspected 

 corners; though never seen before, still they are the 

 same: there has been a place in the heart waiting 

 for them. 



