SUMMER 181 



but of many colours on the earth for there is blue of 

 harebell and purple of rose-bay among the bracken and 

 popping gorse, and heather and foxglove are purple above 

 the sand, and the mint is hoary lilac, the meadow-sweet 

 is foam, there is rose of willow-herb and yellow of flea- 

 bane at the edge of the water, and purple of gentian and 

 cistus yellow on the Downs, and infinite greens in those 

 little dense Edens which nettle and cow-parsnip and 

 bramble and elder make every summer on the banks of 

 the deep lanes. A thousand swifts wheel as if in a fierce 

 wind over the highest places of the hills, over the great 

 seaward-looking camp and its three graves and antique 

 thorns, down to the chestnuts that stand about the rick- 

 yards in the cornland below. 



These are the hours that seem to entice and entrap the 

 airy inhabitants of some land beyond the cloud moun- 

 tains that rise farther than the farthest of downs. Legend 

 has it that long ago strange children were caught upon the 

 earth, and being asked how they had come there, they 

 said that one day as they were herding their sheep in a 

 far country they chanced on a cave; and within they 

 heard music as of heavenly bells, which lured them on 

 and on through the corridors of that cave until they 

 reached our earth; and here their eyes, used only to a 

 twilight between a sun that had set for ever and a night 

 that had never fallen, were dazed by the August glow, 

 and lying bemused they were caught before they could 

 find the earthly entrance to their cave. Small wonder 

 would this adventure be from a region no matter how 

 blessed, when the earth is wearing the best white wild 

 roses or when August is at its height. 



The last hay-waggon has hardly rolled between the 



