134 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



gleams, men's faces brighten, the cart-horse's coat looks 

 glossy, the straw a pleasant yellow. It is gone, and 

 lights up the backs of the sheep yonder as it runs up 

 the hill swifter than a hare. Swish ! The north wind 

 darkens the sky, and the fly-wheel moans in the 

 gloom ; the wood-pigeons go a mile a minute on the 

 wind, hardly using their wings ; the brown woods 

 below huddle together, rounding their shoulders to 

 the blast; a great air-shadow, not mist, a shadow of 

 thickness in the air looms behind a tiled roof in the 

 valley. The vast profound is full of the rushing air. 



These are days of autumn ; but earlier than this, 

 when the wheat that is now being threshed was ripe, 

 the reaping-machine went round and round the field, 

 beginning at the outside by the hedges. Red arms, not 

 unlike a travelling windmill on a small scale, sweep 

 the corn as it is cut and leave it spread on the ground. 

 The bright red fans, the white jacket of the man 

 driving, the brown and iron-grey horses, and yellow 

 wheat are toned — melted together at their edges — 

 with warm sunlight. The machine is lost in the corn, 

 and nothing is visible but the colours, and the fact 

 that it is the reaping, the time of harvest, dear to man 

 these how many thousand years ! There is nothing- 

 new in it ; it is all old as the hills. The straw covers 

 over the knives, the rims of the wheels sink into 

 pimpernel, convolvulus, veronica; the dry earth powders 

 them, and so all beneath is concealed. Above the 

 sunlight (and once now and then the shadow of a 

 tree) throws its mantle over, and, like the hand of an 

 enchanter softly waving, surrounds it with a charm. 

 So the cranks, and wheels, and knives, and mechanism 



