228 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



hundred years repeated. A hundred years of cowslips, 

 blue-bells, violets ; purple spring and golden autumn ; 

 sunshine, shower, and dewy mornings ; the night im- 

 mortal ; all the rhythm of Time unrolling. A chronicle 

 unwritten and past all power of writing : who shall pre- 

 serve a record of the petals that fell from the roses a 

 century ago ? The swallows to the house-top three 

 hundred times — think a moment of that. Thence she 

 sprang, and the world yearns towards her beauty as to 

 flowers that are past. The loveliness of seventeen is 

 centuries old. Is this why passion is almost sad ?'* 



The arms, the torso, the mouth of woman uplift his 

 heart with a sense of the divine. 



In ' The Dewy Morn ' he creates a woman who shall 

 justify this sense of her divinity, which she does without 

 losing her reality, nor even, except in her physical beauty, 

 rising above many other healthy young women in love. 

 She is a beautiful lover, born not out of the bitter sea, but 

 out of the streaming dew that makes the grass sweeter 

 than honeycomb. Jefferies is not merely interested in 

 her, but pours out her passion by an intense imaginative 

 act in which she absorbs him, yet retains her individuality; 

 she is virginal, like few heroines, entirely uncorrupted 

 by the author. She is the girl of ' Love in the Valley ' seen 

 by a different lover. 



Felise, a girl of twenty, lives with her uncle, Mr. Goring, 

 an independent man with some land and a house, who 

 has secluded himself, gardening, beekeeping, planting 

 trees, and meditating. The name Felise was possibly 

 given to her in the early first draft out of homage to 

 ' Poems and Ballads.' The book tells first of her hearty, 

 joyous passion of love for Martial Barnard, a young 

 neighbour living on a big encumbered farm. He has long 

 thought himself in love with another, but his feeling has 

 stagnated, and he has fallen into an embittered state. He 

 admires Felise coolly, and is much with her, but has 

 resolved not to fall in love. She will do anything 



* The Open Air. 



