pinewoods, the dance of the moths round At the 



certain trees, the faint woven cadence of the 5 isi P? of 

 , ,. , .the Moon, 



wheeling gnat-columns, the sudden scream of 



the heron or the wailing of seafowl, or the 

 mournful noise of the moon-restless lapwing, 

 wind in the grass, wind in the hollows of 

 woods, wind among the high corries of the 

 hills. These and a hundred other sounds and 

 sights fill the summer-darkness : the hill-fox 

 barking at the moonshine, the heather-cock in 

 defiance of alarm, deer panting among the 

 bracken, the splash of herring or mackerel on 

 the moonlit breast of the bay, dogs baying a 

 long way off and from farmstead to farmstead. 

 One could not speak of all these things, or of 

 the hundred more. In the meadows, in woods, 

 on upland pastures, from beech-thicket to pine- 

 forest, on the moors, on the hills, in the long 

 valleys and the narrow glens, among the dunes 

 and sea-banks and along wave-loud or wave- 

 whispering shores, everywhere the midsummer- 

 night is filled with sound, with fragrance, with 

 a myriad motion. It is an exquisite unrest : a 

 prolonged suspense, to the dayworn as silence 

 is, yet is not silence, though the illusion is 

 wrought out of the multitudinous silences 

 which incalculably intersperse the continuous 

 chant of death, the ceaseless hymn of life. 

 Everywhere, but far north in particular, the 

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