SPRING 49 



tower amid stateliest pale-foliaged beeches and vast undu- 

 lations of meadow. They are suffused in late sunshine, 

 their trees misty and massed, under a happy sky. Those 

 beeches lie below the road, lining the edge of one long 

 meadow. The opposite sun pours almost horizontal beams 

 down upon the perfectly new leaves so as to give each 

 one a yellow-green glow and to some a silver shimmer 

 about the shadowy boles. For the moment the trees lose 

 their anchor in the solid earth. They are floating, 

 wavering, shimmering, more aerial and pure and wild 

 than birds or any visible things, than aught except music 

 and the fantasies of the brain. The mind takes flight 

 and hovers among the leaves with whatsoever powers 

 it has akin to dew and trembling lark's song and rippling 

 water; it is throbbed away not only above the ponderous 

 earth but below the firmament in the middle world of 

 footless fancies and half thoughts that drift hither and 

 thither and know neither a heaven nor a home. It is a 

 loss of a name and not of a belief that forbids us to say 

 to-day that sprites flutter and tempt there among the new 

 leaves of the beeches in the late May light. 



Almost every group of oast houses here, seen either 

 amongst autumn fruit or spring blossom, is equal in its 

 effect to a temple, though different far, even when ivy- 

 mantled as they occasionally are, from the grey towered 

 or spired churches standing near. The low round brick 

 tower of the oast house, surmounted by a tiled cone of 

 about equal height, and that again crested with a white 

 cowl and vane, is a pleasant form. There are groups of 

 three which, in their age, mellow hue, roundness, and 

 rustic dignity, have suggested the triple mother goddesses 



