SPRING 51 



single field, a pure pool of sedge and bright water, an arm 

 of sea, a train of clouds, a road. I see their hands in 

 many a by-way of space and moment of time. One of 

 them assuredly harbours in a rude wet field I know of 

 that lies neglected between two large estates : three acres 

 at most of roughly sloping pasture, bounded above by the 

 brambly edge of a wood and below by a wild stream. 

 Here a company of meadow-sweet invades the grass, 

 there willow herb tall with rosy summits of flowers, 

 hoary lilac mint, dull golden fleabane, spiry coltstails. 

 The snake creeps careless through these thickets of bloom. 

 The sedge- warbler sings there. One old white horse is 

 content with the field, summer and winter, and has made 

 a plot of it silver with his hairs where he lies at night. 

 The image of the god is in the grey riven willow that 

 leans leafless over the stream like a peasant sculpture of 

 old time. There is another of these godkins in a bare 

 chalk hollow where the dead thistles stick out through a 

 yard of snow and give strange thoughts of the sailless 

 beautiful sea that once rippled over the Downs : one also 

 in the smell of hay and mixen and cow's breath at the 

 first farm out of London where the country is unsoiled. 

 There is one in many a worthless waste by the roadside, 

 such as that between two roads that go almost parallel 

 for a while a long steep piece, only a few feet broad, 

 impenetrably overgrown by blackthorn and blackberry, 

 but unenclosed : and one in each of the wayside chalk-pits 

 with overhanging beech roots above and bramble below. 

 One, too, perhaps many, were abroad one August night 

 on a high hillside when the hedge crickets sang high up 

 in the dogwood and clematis like small but deafening 



E 2 



