The Open Air 



as carefully as I may. The boughs are blackened 

 by wet and would touch cold. From the grasses to 

 the branches there is nothing any one would like to 

 handle, and I stand apart even from the bush that 

 keeps away the rain. The green plovers are the only 

 things of life that save the earth from utter loneliness. 

 Heavily as the rain may fall, cold as the saturated 

 wind may blow, the plovers remind us of the beauty 

 of shape, colour, and animation. They seem too 

 slender to withstand the blast they should have gone 

 with the swallows too delicate for these rude hours ; 

 yet they alone face them. 



Once more the wave of rain has passed, and yonder 

 the hills appear; these are but uplands. The near- 

 est and highest has a green rampart, visible for a 

 moment against the dark sky, and then again 

 wrapped in a toga of misty cloud. So the chilled 

 Roman drew his toga around him in ancient days as 

 from that spot he looked wistfully southwards and 

 thought of Italy. Wee-ah-wee ! Some chance move- 

 ment has been noticed by the nearest bird, and away 

 they go at once as if with the same wings, sweeping 

 overhead, then to the right, then to the left, and then 

 back again, till at last lost in the coming shower. 

 After they have thus vibrated to and fro long enough, 

 like a pendulum coming to rest, they will alight in 

 the open field on the ridge behind. There in drilled 

 ranks, well closed together, all facing the same way, 

 they will stand for hours. Let us go also and let 

 the shower conceal them. Another time my path 

 leads over the hills. 



It is afternoon, which in winter is evening. The 

 sward of the down is dry under foot, but hard, and 

 does not lift the instep with the springy feel of 

 summer. The sky is gone, it is not clouded, it is 



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