THE END OF WINTER 35 



that is now alive with the moist gleaming of myriads of 

 leaves on bramble, thorn and elder. Presently the rain is 

 only a glittering of needles in the sun. For the sky is all 

 one pale grey cloud, darker at the lowest edge where it 

 trails upon the downs and veils their summits, except 

 in the south-east. There the edge is lifted up over a 

 narrow pane of silver across which fleet the long slender 

 fringes of the clouds. Through this pane the sun sends 

 a broad cascade of light, and up into this the fields and 

 the Down beyond rise and are transfigured, the fields into 

 a lake of emerald, the Down — here crowned by trees in 

 a cluster — into a castle of pearl set upon the borders of 

 the earth. Slowly this pane is broadened; the clouds are 

 plumped into shape, are illumined, are distinguished from 

 one another by blue vales of sky, until at length the land 

 is all one gleam of river and pool and grass and leaf and 

 polished bough, whether swollen into hills or folded into 

 valleys or smoothed into plain. The sky seems to belong 

 to this land, the sky of purest blue and clouds that are 

 moulded like the Downs themselves but of snow and 

 sun. 



In the clear air each flower stands out with separate and 

 perfect beauty, moist, soft and bright, a beauty than which 

 i know nothing more nearly capable of transferring the 

 soul to the days and the pleasures of infancy. The crust 

 of half a lifetime falls away, and we can feel what Blake 

 expressed when he wrote those lines in Milton — 



Thou perceivest the flowers put forth their precious odours, 

 And none can tell how from so small a centre comes such sweet, 

 Forgetting that within that centre Eternity expands 

 Its ever-during doors, that Og and Anax fiercely guard. 

 D 2 



