218 THE OPEN AIR. 



song, grows yearly dearer and more dear to this our 

 ancient earth. So many centuries have flown ! Now 

 it is the manner with all natural things to gather as 

 it were by smallest particles. The merest grain of 

 sand drifts unseen into a crevice, and by-and-by 

 another; after a while there is a heap ; a century and 

 it is a mound, and then every one observes and 

 comments on it. Time itself has gone, on like this; 

 the years have accumulated, first in drifts, then in 

 heaps, and now a vast mound, to which the mountains 

 are knolls, rises up and overshadows us. Time lies 

 heavy on the world. The old, old earth is glad to 

 turn from the cark and care of drifted centuries to the 

 first sweet blades of green. 



There is sunshine to-day after rain, and every lark 

 is singing. Across the vale a broad cloud-shadow 

 descends the hillside, is lost in the hollow, and 

 presently, without warning, slips over the edge, 

 corning swiftly along the green tips. The sunshine 

 follows the warmer for its momentary absence. 

 Far, far down in a grassy coomb stands a solitary 

 cornrick, conical roofed, casting a lonely shadow- 

 marked because so solitary, and beyond it on the 

 rising slope is a brown copse. The leafless branches 

 take a brown tint in the sunlight ; on the summit 

 above there is furze; then more hill lines drawn 

 against the sky. In the tops of the dark pines at the 

 corner of the copse, could the glance sustain itself to 

 see them, there are finches warming themselves in the 

 sunbeams. The thick needles shelter them from the 

 current of air, and the sky is bluer above the pines. 

 Their hearts are full already of the happy days to 



