The Open Air 



comments on it. Time itself has gone on like this; 

 the years have accumulated, first in drifts, then in 

 heaps, and now a vast mound, to which the mountains 

 are knolls, rises up and overshadows us. Time lies 

 heavy on the world. The old, old earth is glad to 

 turn from the cark and care of drifted centuries to 

 the first sweet blades of green. 



There is sunshine to-day after rain, and every lark 

 is singing. Across the vale a broad cloud-shadow 

 descends the hillside, is lost in the hollow, and 

 presently, without warning, slips over the edge, 

 coming swiftly along the green tips. The sunshine 

 follows the warmer for its momentary absence. 

 Far, far down in a grassy coomb stands a solitary 

 cornrick, conical roofed, casting a lonely shadow 

 marked because so solitary, and beyond it on the 

 rising slope is a brown copse. The leafless branches 

 take a brown tint in the sunlight; on the summit 

 above there is furze; then more hill lines drawn 

 against the sky. In the tops of the dark pines at the 

 corner of the copse, could the glance sustain itself to 

 see them, there are finches warming themselves in the 

 sunbeams. The thick needles shelter them from the 

 current of air, and the sky is bluer above the pines. 

 Their hearts are full already of the happy days to 

 come, when the moss yonder by the beech, and the 

 lichen on the fir-trunk, and the loose fibres caught in 

 the fork of an unbending bough, shall furnish forth a 

 sufficient mansion for their young. Another broad 

 cloud-shadow, and another warm embrace of sunlight. 

 All the serried ranks of the green corn bow at the 

 word of command as the wind rushes over them. 



There is largeness and freedom here. Broad as the 

 down and free as the wind, the thought can roam 

 high over the narrow roofs in the vale. Nature has 



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