The Open Air 



feet. Something comes with her that is more than 

 mortal; witness the yearning welcome that stretches 

 towards her from all. As the sunshine lights up the 

 aspect of things, so her presence sweetens the very 

 flowers like dew. But the yearning welcome is, I 

 think, the most remarkable of the evidence that may 

 be accumulated about it. So deep, so earnest, so 

 forgetful of the rest the passion of beauty is almost 

 sad in its intense abstraction. It is a passion, this 

 yearning. She walks in the glory of young life; she 

 is really centuries old. 



A hundred and fifty years at the least more 

 probably twice that have passed away, while from 

 all enchanted things of earth and air this precious- 

 ness has been drawn. From the south wind that 

 breathed a century and a half ago over the green 

 wheat. From the perfume of the growing grasses 

 waving over honey-laden clover and laughing 

 veronica, hiding the greenfinches, baffling the bee. 

 From rose-loved hedges, woodbine, and cornflower 

 azure-blue, where yellowing wheat-stalks crowd up 

 under the shadow of green firs. All the devious 

 brooklet's sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight ; 

 all the wild woods hold the beauty; all the broad 

 hill's thyme and freedom: thrice a hundred years 

 repeated. A hundred years of cowslips, blue-bells, 

 violets; purple spring and golden autumn ; sunshine, 

 shower, and dewy mornings; the night immortal; 

 all the rhythm of Time unrolling. A chronicle un- 

 written and past all power of writing: who shall 

 preserve a record of the petals that fell from the roses 

 a century ago ? The swallows to the housetops three 

 hundred times think a moment of that. Thence 

 she sprang, and the world yearns towards her beauty 

 as to flowers that are past. The loveliness of seven- 



190 



