44 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



things that were there by day over the elms as well as by 

 night, and not apparitions of the evening departing at the 

 twittering of the swallows. They were real, and the 

 touch of his mind felt to them. 



' He could not, as he reclined on the garden path by the 

 strawberries, physically reach to and feel the oak ; but he 

 could feel the oak in his mind, and so from the oak, step- 

 ping beyond it, he felt the stars. They were always there 

 by day as well as by night. . . . 



' The heavens were as much a part of life as the elms, 

 the oak, the house, the garden and orchard, the meadow 

 and the brook. They were no more separated than the 

 furniture of the parlour, than the old oak chair where he 

 sat, and saw the new moon shine over the mulberry-tree. 

 They were neither above nor beneath, they were in the 

 same place with him ; just as when you walk in the wood 

 the trees are all about you, on a plane with you, so he 

 felt the constellations and the sun on a plane with him, 

 and that he was moving among them as the earth rolled 

 on, like them, with them, in the stream of space. 



' The day did not shut off the stars, the night did not 

 shut off the sun ; they were always there. Not that he 

 always thought of them, but they were never dismissed. 

 When he listened to the greenfinches sweetly calling in the 

 hawthorn, or when he read his books, poring over the 

 "Odyssey," with the sunshine on the wall, they were always 

 there ; there was no severance, Bevis lived not only out 

 to the finches and the swallows, to the far-away hills, but 

 he lived out and felt out to the sky. 



' It was living, not thinking. He lived it, never think- 

 ing, as the finches live their sunny life in the happy 

 days of June. There was magic in everything, blades 

 of grass and stars, the sun and the stones upon the 

 ground.' 



There is another passage in ' Bevis ' where he ' became 

 silent and fell into one of his dream states — when, as Mark 

 said, he was like a tree '; he was ' lost — something seemed 

 to take him out of himself '; and another where he sat 



