SPRING 51 



single field, a pure pool of sedge and bright water, an arm 

 of sea, a train of clouds, a road. I see their hands in 

 many a by-way of space and moment of time. One of 

 them assuredly harbours in a rude wet field I know of 

 that lies neglected between two large estates : three acres 

 at most of roughly sloping pasture, bounded above by the 

 brambly edge of a wood and below by a wild stream. 



I Here a company of meadow-sweet invades the grass, 

 jliere willow herb tall with rosy summits of flowers, 

 loary lilac mint, dull golden fleabane, spiry coltstails. 

 |he snake creeps careless through these thickets of bloom. 

 The sedge- warbler sings there. One old white horse is 

 bntent with the field, summer and winter, and has made 

 f plot of it silver with his hairs where he lies at night. 

 The image of the god is in the grey riven willow that 

 leans leafless over the stream like a peasant sculpture of 

 old time. There is another of these godkins in a bare 

 chalk hollow where the dead thistles stick out through a 

 yard of snow and give strange thoughts of the sailless 

 beautiful sea that once rippled over the Downs : one also 

 in the smell of hay and mixen and cow's breath at the 

 first farm out of London where the country is unsoiled. 

 There is one in many a worthless waste by the roadside, 

 such as that between two roads that go almost parallel 

 for a while — a long steep piece, only a few feet broad, 

 impenetrably overgrown by blackthorn and blackberry, 

 but unenclosed : and one in each of the wayside chalk-pits 

 with overhanging beech roots above and bramble below. 

 One, too, perhaps many, were abroad one August night 

 on a high hillside when the hedge crickets sang high up 

 in the dogwood and clematis like small but deafening 

 E 2 



