The Open Air 



nothing. When he is awake he does not see it; 

 now he sleeps he does not hear it. It is only in great 

 woods that you cannot see the trees. He is like a 

 hat in a forest he is not conscious of it. Long 

 hours of work have given him slumber; and as he 

 sleeps he seems to express by contrast the immensity 

 and endlessness of the life around him. 



Sometimes a floating haze, now thicker here, and 

 now lit up yonder by the sunshine, brings out objects 

 more distinctly than a clear atmosphere. Away there 

 tall thin masts stand out, rising straight up above 

 the red roofs. There is a faint colour on them; the 

 yards are dark being inclined, they do not reflect 

 the light at an angle to reach us. Half-furled canvas 

 droops in folds, now swelling a little as the wind 

 blows, now heavily sinking. One white sail is set 

 and gleams alone among the dusky folds; for the 

 canvas at large is dark with coal-dust, with smoke, 

 with the grime that settles everywhere where men 

 labour with bare arms and chests. Still and quiet 

 as trees the masts rise into the hazy air; who would 

 think, merely to look at them, of the endless labour 

 they mean? The labour to load, and the labour to 

 unload; the labour at sea, and the long hours of 

 ploughing the waves by night; the labour at the 

 warehouses; the labour in the fields, the mines, the 

 mountains; the labour in the factories. Ever and 

 again the sunshine gleams now on this group of 

 masts, now on that; for they stand in groups as 

 trees often grow, a thicket here and a thicket yonder. 

 Labour to obtain the material, labour to bring it 

 hither, labour to force it into shape work without 

 end. Masts are always dreamy to look at: they 

 speak a romance of the sea; of unknown lands; of 

 distant forests aglow with tropical colours and 

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