THE END OF WINTER 23 



the fount. AH things are possible in the windings 

 between fount and sea. 



Never again shall we demand the cuckoo's song from 

 the August silence. Never will July nip the spring and 

 lengthen the lambs' faces and take away their piquancy, 

 or June shut a gate between us and the nightingale, or 

 May deny the promise of April. Hark ! before the end of 

 afternoon the owls hoot in their sleep in the ivied beeches. 

 A dream has flitted past them, more silent of wing than 

 themselves. Now it is between the wings of the first 

 white butterfly, and it plants a smile in the face of the 

 infant that cannot speak : and again it is with the brim- 

 stone butterfly, and the child who is gathering celandine 

 and cuckoo flower and violet starts back almost in fear 

 at the dream. 



The grandmother sitting in her daughter's house, left 

 all alone in silence, her hands clasped upon her knees, 

 forgets the courage without hope that has carried her 

 through eighty years, opens her eyes, unclasps her hands 

 from the knot as of stiff rope, distends them and feels 

 the air, and the dream is between her fingers and she too 

 smiles, she knows not why. A girl of sixteen, ill-dressed, 

 not pretty, has seen it also. She has tied up her black 

 hair in a new crimson ribbon. She laughs aloud with a 

 companion at something they know in common and in 

 secret, and as she does so lifts her neck and is glad from 

 the sole of her foot to the crown of her head. She is 

 lost in her laughter and oblivious of its cause. She walks 

 away, and her step is as firm as that of a ewe defending 

 her lamb. She was a poor and misused child, and I can 

 see her as a woman of fifty, sitting on a London bench, 



