THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER 



the same grasses and green hedges, there 

 is the same blue sky, but did we ever have 

 enough of them ? No, not in a hundred 

 years! There seems always a depth, 

 somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that 

 has not been seen through, a corner full 

 of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which 

 may give us something. Bees go by me 

 as I stand under the apple, but they pass 

 on for the most part bound on a long 

 journey, across to the clover fields or up 

 to the thyme lands; only a few go down 

 into the mowing grass. The hive bees 

 are the most impatient of insects; they 

 cannot bear to entangle their wings beat- 

 ing against grasses or boughs. Not one 

 will enter a hedge. They like an open and 

 level surface, places cropped by sheep, 

 the sward by the roadside, fields of clover, 

 where the flower is not deep under grass. 



