TO BRIGHTON 



outline, and it is high above where the summer 

 blue was lately. Or is it the buff leaves, the grey 

 stalks, the dun grasses, the ripe fruit, the mist 

 which hides the distance that makes the day so 

 brown ? But the ditches below are yet green with 

 brooklime and rushes. By a gateway stands a tall 

 campanula or bell-flower, two feet high or nearly, 

 with great bells of blue. 



A passing shepherd, without his sheep, but 

 walking with his crook as a staff, stays and turns a 

 brown face towards me when I ask him the way. 

 He points with his iron crook at a narrow line 

 which winds up the Down by some chalk-pits ; it 

 is a footpath from the corner of the road. Just 

 by the corner the hedge is grey with silky flocks 

 of clematis ; the hawthorn is hidden by it. Near 

 by there is a bush, made up of branches from five 

 different shrubs and plants. 



First hazel, from which the yellow leaves are 

 fast dropping; among this dogwood, with leaves 

 darkening ; between these a bramble bearing berries, 

 some red and some ripe, and yet a pink flower 

 or two left. Thrusting itself into the tangle, long 

 woody bines of bittersweet hang their clusters of 

 red berries, and above and over all the hoary 

 clematis spreads its beard, whitening to meet the 

 winter. These five are all intermixed and bound 

 up together, flourishing in a mass ; nuts and edible 

 -255 



