282 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



crossed from side to side, like a roof supported 

 on two walls of green. Sparrows chirped in 

 the wheat at the verge above, their calls falling 

 like the twittering of swallows from the air. 

 There was no other sound. The short grass 

 was dried gray as it grew by the heat ; the 

 sun hung over the narrow vale as if it had 

 been put there by hand. Burning, burning, 

 the sun glowed on the sward at the foot of 

 the slope where these thoughts burned into 

 me. How many, many years, how many 

 cycles of years, how many bundles of cycles 

 of years, had the sun glowed down thus on 

 that hollow ? Since it was formed how long ? 

 Since it was worn and shaped, groove-like, in 

 the flanks of the hills by mighty forces which 

 had ebbed. Alone with the sun which glowed 

 on the work when it was done, I saw back 

 through space to the old time of tree-ferns, of 

 the lizard flying through the air, the lizard- 

 dragon wallowing in sea foam, the moun- 

 tainous creatures, twice elephantine, feeding 

 on land ; all the crooked sequence of life. The 

 dragon-fly which passed me traced a con- 

 tinuous descent from the fly marked on stone 



