HISTORY AND THE PARISH 169 



of the Downs, the oaks of the Weald, the elms of the 

 Wiltshire vales. 



Before I part from trees I should like to mention those 

 of mid-Somerset and above all, the elms. I am thinking 

 of them as they are at noon on the hottest days of hay- 

 making at the end of June. The sky is hot, its pale blue 

 without pity and changing to a yellow of mist near the 

 horizon. The land is level and all of grass, and where 

 the hay is not spread in swathes the grass is almost 

 invisible for the daisies on its motionless surface. Here and 

 there the mower whirrs and seems natural music, like the 

 grasshopper's, of the burning earth. Through the levels 

 wind the heavy-topped grey willows of a hidden stream. 

 In the hedges and in the wide fields and about the still, 

 silent farmhouses of stone there are many elms. They 

 are tall and slender despite their full mounded summits. 

 They cast no shade. In the great heat their green is all 

 but grey, and their leaves are lost in the mist which their 

 mingling creates. Grey-hooded, grey-mantled, they 

 seem to be stealing away over the fields to the sanctuary 

 of the dark-wooded hills, low and round and lapped 

 entirely in leaves, which stand in the mist at the edge of 

 the plain to be leaving that plain to the possession of 

 the whirring mower and the sun of almighty summer. 



Sycamores solemnized the Cornish farm in the 

 twilight, where I asked the farmer's wife if she could let 

 us have two beds for the night. She stood in the door- 

 way, hands on hips, watching her grandchildren's last 

 excited minutes of play in the rickyard. 



" He's the master," she replied, pointing to the farmer 

 who was talking to his carter, between the rickyard 

 and the door, under the sycamores. 



