1 8 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



side, rosy tongue bright against his yellow fur, waiting 

 upon her fancies. His rest and his motion, like hers, are 

 careless and beautiful, gifts of the sun, the wind and the 

 earth. As I look at them I think of such a child and 

 such a playmate that lived two thousand years ago in 

 the sun, and once as they played each set a foot upon the 

 soft clay of a tile that the tile maker had not yet burned 

 hard and red. The tile fell in the ruin of a Roman city 

 in Britain, was buried hundreds of years in ashes and 

 flowering mould, and yesterday I saw the footprints in 

 the dark red tile, two thousand years old. 



A day follows of rain and wind, and it is the robin 

 that is most heard among the dripping thorns, the robin 

 and his autumnal voice. But the sky clears for sunset and 

 the blackbird's hour, and, as twilight ends, only the rear 

 of the disappearing procession of day cloud is visible on 

 the western horizon, while the procession of night has 

 but sent up two or three dark forerunners. The sky is of 

 palest blue, and Jupiter and Sirius are bright over the sea, 

 Venus over the land and Mercury just over the far oaks. 

 The sea is very dark except at the horizon which is pale 

 with the dissolving remnant of sunset gold in it; but two 

 ranks of breakers throw up a waving vapour of fairy 

 foam against the dark waves behind. 



Again there are roaring wet mornings and sunlit morn- 

 ings, but in them all the pewits wheel over the marsh and 

 their wild cries mingle with the sweet whimper of dun- 

 lins, the songs of larks, the glitter of the dykes, the wall 

 of rain. All day the sky over heathery moorland is like 

 a reduplication of the moorland, except that at the 

 horizon the sky clears at intervals and fleets of pure white 



