1 6 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



faintly indented, the surface not perfectly regular but 

 dimpled so as to break the light, and the edge wavering 

 away from the pure circular form; in hue a pale chestnut 

 paling to a transparent edge of honey colour; and the 

 whole surface so smooth and polished by rain as to seem 

 coated in ice. What a thought for the great earth on 

 such a day ! Out of the wood on to this grass the 

 thrushes steal, running with heads down and stopping 

 with heads prouder than stags'; out also into the short 

 corn; and so glad are they that they quarrel and sing on 

 the ground without troubling to find a perch. 



It is perfectly still; the sun splutters out of the thick 

 grey and white sky, the white sails shine on a sea of 

 steel, and it is warm. And now in the luxury of the first 

 humid warmth and quiet of the year the blackbird sings. 

 The rain sets in at nightfall, but the wind does not blow, 

 and still the blackbird sings and the thrushes will hardly 

 leave the corn. That one song alone sweetens the wide 

 vague country of evening, the cloudy oak woods, the 

 brown mixen under the elms and the little white farm 

 behind the unpruned limes, with its oblong windows 

 irregularly placed and of unequal size, its white door 

 almost at a corner, and the lawn coming right to the 

 walls. 



Day breaks and sun and wind dance together in the 

 clouds and trees, but without rain. Larks sing over the 

 dark heavy cornland in which the watery furrows shine. 

 The dead drab grasses wave at the feet of the hedgerows. 

 Little pools at meadow corners bring down the sky to 

 the dark earth. Horses nod before the plough. A slight 

 haze exhales from the innumerable rich spongy clods, 



