Summer's Afterglow 247 



Summer there is an ever-present consciousness of 

 the ebbing tide of life, and of nature still shrinking 

 and crumbling. This gives a touch to the sunshine 

 wholly different from the hard brilliance of a fine 

 day in naked March, or even in the faint, expectant 

 readiness of clear weather after the New Year. 

 Even the last lingering blossoms seem to speak 

 of decay and winter rather than of summer and 

 life ; for they too must vanish in corruption before 

 the year's tide turns and the sap mounts upwards 

 for the spring. The rank herbage of every hedge- 

 side is still full of soft decaying verdure in stem 

 and spray ; dim and faded as is the hue of this 

 vegetation, we see how its aspect is wholly different 

 from that of the withered browns and greys of the 

 down-beaten litter of early spring. There are a 

 hundred little differences in the wild life of the 

 fields ; when the caw of the rooks breaks on the ear 

 towards sunset we see, for instance, how they are 

 not busily clamouring round their nest-trees, nor 

 even paying the rookery a casual visit of investiga- 

 tion, as they will very early in the year, but are 

 streaming high overhead to the deep woods, often 

 far from their spring nesting-places, where they 

 roost in their great autumn flocks. But stronger 

 than all such cumulative signs is the universal 

 sense that the earth is still cumbered everywhere 

 with the bygone summer's ruin, which the forces 

 of decay have not yet had time to absorb. The 

 year is dying, but not yet dead ; and until the 

 perfect midwinter stillness is come, though the 

 song-thrush sing with never so sanguine a throat, 



