FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



the rook is blown aside like a loose feather in the wind ; 

 he knows his building-time from the fathers of his house 

 — hereditary knowledge handed down in settled course : 

 but the stray things of the hedge, how do they know ? 

 The great blackbird has planted his nest by the ash-stole, 

 open to every one's view, without a bough to conceal it 

 and not a leaf on the ash — nothing but the moss on the 

 lower end of the branches. He does not seek cunningly 

 for concealment. I think of the drift of time, and I see 

 the apple bloom coming and the blue veronica in the 

 grass. A thousand thousand buds and leaves and 

 flowers and blades of grass, things to note day by day, 

 increasing so rapidly that no pencil can put them down 

 and no book hold them, not even to number them — and 

 how to write the thoughts they give ? All these without 

 me — how can they manage without me ? 



For they were so much to me, I had come to feel that 

 I was as much in return to them. The old, old error : 

 I love the earth, therefore the earth loves me — I am her 

 child — I am Man, the favoured of all creatures. I am 

 the centre, and all for me was made. 



In time past, strong of foot, I walked gaily up the 

 noble hill that leads to Beachy Head from Eastbourne, 

 joying greatly in the sun and the wind. Every step 

 crumbled up numbers of minute grey shells, empty and 

 dry, that crunched under foot like hoar-frost or fragile 

 beads. They were very pretty ; it was a shame to crush 

 them — such vases as no king's pottery could make. 

 They lay by millions in the depths of the sward, and I 

 thought as I broke them unwillingly that each of these 

 had once been a house of life. A living creature dwelt 

 in each and felt the joy of existence, and was to itself all 

 in all — as if the great sun over the hill shone for it, and 

 the width of the earth under was for it. and the grass 



