OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



NO one else seems to have seen 

 the sparkle on the brook, or 

 heard the music at the hatch, 

 or to have felt back through the cen- 

 turies ; and when I try to describe these 

 things to them, they look at me with 

 stolid incredulity. No one seems to 

 understand how I got food from the 

 clouds, nor what there was in the night, 

 nor why it is not so good to look at it 

 out of window. They turn their faces 

 away from me, so that perhaps after all 

 I was mistaken, and there never was 

 any such place nor any such meadows, 

 and I was never there. And perhaps 

 in course of time I shall find out also, 

 when I pass away physically, that as a 

 matter of fact there never was any 

 earth.— " Field and Hedgerow': My Old 

 Village. 



109 



