30 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



exposed to the sun by the shearer's hand. Most con- 

 spicuous of the early green is that of the pale swords of 

 sedge that bear purple brown feathers of flower at the 

 end of March. The crystal wavering water, the pale 

 green stems and ever so slightly curving blades, and the 

 dark bloom, make the sense smart with joy. Never was 

 ivy more luxuriant under the beeches, nor moss so power- 

 ful as where it arrays them from crown to pedestal. The 

 lichens, fine grey-green bushy lichens on the thorns, are 

 as dense as if a tide full of them had swept through the 

 coombe. From the topmost branches hangs the cordage 

 of ivy and honeysuckle and clematis. The missel thrush 

 rolls out his clear song. The woodpecker laughs his loud 

 shaking laughter as he bounds in his flight. Among the 

 golden green mistletoe in the old shaggy apple tree at the 

 entrance of the coombe the blackbird sings, composing 

 phrases all the sweeter for being strangely like some in 

 the songs that countrymen used to sing. Earth has no 

 dearer voice than his when it is among the chilly rain at 

 the end of the light. All day there have been blue skies 

 and parading white clouds, and no wind, with sudden 

 invasions of violent wind and hail or rain, followed by 

 perfected calm and warmer sun — sun which lures the 

 earliest tortoise-shell butterfly to alight on the footworn 

 flints in the path up the coombe. At last the sky seems 

 securely blue above the hangers and a clear small star 

 or two pricks through it. But, emerging from the coombe, 

 whose sides shut out half the heavens, you see that the 

 west has wonderfully ordered and dressed itself with pale 

 sky and precipitous, dark, modelled clouds and vague 

 woods, and above them the new moon. The blackbirds 



