THE OLD QUARRY 



TIME has healed the wounds, effaced the scars. 

 Many years ago man commercial, go-ahead man 

 saw the red sandstone outcrop amidst the bracken and 

 beneath the smooth-boled beeches; he saw and calculated, 

 then brought his tools of steel and iron. Ruthlessly he 

 hacked down the ancient timbers and dug out their roots ; 

 he smoothed the undulations, nature's lines of beauty 

 and grace; he filled in the little valleys and the hollow 

 where for ages the brook had worked so patiently; he laid 

 down branches and barrow-loads of broken stones where 

 the ground was soft and made a road. Along this road, 

 little more than a track amongst the trees, he dragged his 

 lumbering carts, scoring deep gashes and ruts in the sweet 

 earth, the leaf-mould of hundreds of years. The thunder 

 of blasting-powder startled the ringdoves a mile away 

 and set the pheasant? crowing; its smothering fumes 

 tainted the scented air. He hacked off masses of rock 

 and shaped them with his clinking chisels, and soon great 

 red walls appeared, and ladders were lowered to enable 

 the worker to reach the more difficult spots. So the pit 

 deepened, and the scar became larger and redder. 



Round the thatched sheds, thatched with straw and 

 the bracken he had destroyed, was a litter of broken pots 

 and bottles, empty tins, rusty iron, and waste paper; 

 it was the chaos of untidy man. But in the country round, 

 and in the towns, walls were built, substantial stone houses 

 were erected, and stately square-towered churches, and 

 the tortured, tool-hacked stone lost its brilliant natural 

 red and darkened to a beautiful weathered grey or brown. 



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