Under the Acorns 



thought that the summer was going fast. Another 

 sign the grass by the gateway, an acre of it, was 

 brightly yellow with hawkweeds, and under these 

 were the last faded brown heads of meadow clover; 

 the brown, the bright yellow disks, the green grass, 

 the tinted sunlight falling upon it, caused a wavering 

 colour that fleeted before the glance. 



All things brown, and yellow, and red, are brought 

 out by the autumn sun; the brown furrows freshly 

 turned where the stubble was yesterday, the brown 

 bark of trees, the brown fallen leaves, the brown 

 stalks of plants; the red haws, the red unripe black- 

 berries, red bryony berries, reddish-yellow fungi; 

 yellow hawkweed, yellow ragwort, yellow hazel- 

 leaves, elms, spots in lime or beech; not a speck of 

 yellow, red, or brown the yellow sunlight does not 

 find out. And these make autumn, with the caw of 

 rooks, the peculiar autumn caw of laziness and full 

 feeding, the sky blue as March between the great 

 masses of dry cloud floating over, the mist in the 

 distant valleys, the tinkle of traces as the plough turns 

 and the silence of the woodland birds. The lark 

 calls as he rises from the earth, the swallows still 

 wheeling call as they go over, but the woodland birds 

 are mostly still and the restless sparrows gone forth 

 in a cloud to the stubble. Dry clouds, because they 

 evidently contain no moisture that will fall as rain 

 here; thick mists, condensed haze only, floating on 

 before the wind. The oaks were not yet yellow, 

 their leaves were half green, half brown; Time had 

 begun to invade them, but had not yet indented his 

 full mark. 



Of the year there are two most pleasurable seasons : 

 the spring, when the oak-leaves come russet-brown 

 on the great oaks ; the autumn, when the oak-leaves 

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