MEADOW THOUGHTS. 75 



streamlet worn deep in the earth. I can see nothing 

 between the top of the espalier screen and the horses 

 under the elms on the hill. But the starlings go up 

 and down into the hollow space, which is aglow with 

 golden buttercups, and, indeed, I am looking over a 

 hundred finches eagerly searching, sweetly calling, 

 happy as the summer day. A thousand thousand 

 grasshoppers are leaping, thrushes are labouring, filled 

 with love and tenderness, doves cooing — there is as 

 much joy as there are leaves on the hedges. Faster 

 than the starling's flight my mind runs up to the 

 streamlet in the deep green trench beisde the hill. 



Pleasant it was to trace it upwards, narrowing at 

 every ascending step, till the thin stream, thinner than 

 fragile glass, did but merely slip over the stones. 

 A little less and it could not have run at all, water 

 could not stretch out to greater tenuity. It smoothed 

 the brown growth on the stones, stroking it softly. It 

 filled up tiny basins of sand, and ran out at the edges 

 between minute rocks of flint. Beneath it went under 

 thickest brooklime, blue flowered, and serrated water- 

 parsnips, lost like many a mighty river for awhile 

 among a forest of leaves. Higher up masses of bramble 

 and projecting thorn stopped the explorer, who must 

 wind round the grassy mound. Pausing to look back 

 a moment there were meads under the hill with the 

 shortest and greenest herbage, perpetually watered, 

 and without one single buttercup, a strip of pure 

 green among yellow flowers and yellowing corn. 

 A few hollow oaks on whose boughs the cuckoos 

 stayed to call, two or three peewits coursing up 

 and down, larks singing, and for all else silence. 



