CHAPTER VIII 



JUNE HAMPSHIRE THE GOLDEN AGE TRAHERNE 



HAMPSHIRE. 



Now day by day, indoors and out of doors, the con- 

 quest of spring proceeds to the music of the conquerors. 

 One evening the first chafer comes to the lamp, and his 

 booming makes the ears tremble with dim apprehension. 

 He climbs, six-legged and slow, up the curtain, support- 

 ing himself now and then by unfurling his wings, or if 

 not he falls with a drunken moan, then begins to climb 

 again, and at last blunders about the room like a ball that 

 must strike something, the white ceiling, the white paper, 

 the lamp, and when he falls he rests. In his painful 

 climbing he looks human, as perhaps a man looks angelic 

 to an angel; but there is nothing lovelier and more sur- 

 prising than the unfurling of his pinions like a magic 

 wind-blown cloak out of that hard mail. 



Another day the far-off woods in a hot, moist air first 

 attain their rich velvet mossiness, and even near at hand 

 the gorse-bushes all smouldering with bloom are like 

 clouds settled on the earth, having no solidity, but just 

 colour and warmth and pleasantness. 



The broad-backed chestnuts bloom. On the old cart- 

 lodge tiles the vast carapace of the house-leek is green 

 and rosy, and out of the midst of it grow dandelions and 

 grass, and the mass of black mould which it has accumu- 

 lated in a century bends down the roof. 



The hawthorn-bloom is past before we are sure that it 

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