SUMMER 



SUMMER, as compared with the seasons on either side of 

 it, may be looked upon in spite of many exceptions as a 

 time of puberty, when vigour keeps, so far as we see, at 

 a constant point. There are indeed only two seasons, 

 summer and winter, two static times bound together by the 

 changing months of spring and autumn. But the tide of 

 the year, rising in spring, is quicker, more sudden, than the 

 ebb, though nothing is quite sudden in this happy island of 

 quiet gradations, where the days are bound, each to each, by 

 lineal affection. One day in late June, almost before we are 

 aware, the country before us is at the full the tide is in. 

 The green waters have quietly made through the creeks and 

 inlets and crept through the ridges of the sands. They 

 have hidden the rocks that sloped down to the sand ; and 

 the scenery of the shore, various if bleak, is clean gone 

 under an everlasting wash of twinkling ripples. One may 

 speak of the summer overcoming the face of the country 

 very much in the same terms as one may speak of the rising 

 sea. The green leaves are a tide that hides the tracery of 

 bough and twig, not much unlike the flowing of the sea over 

 sand and rock. Many shapes and forms give place to one 

 wash of colour. 



