SPRING 57 



Out of the coombe a deep lane ascends through beech, 

 hazel and beam to another common of heather, and whin- 

 berry bathing the feet of scattered birch, and squat oak 

 and pine, interrupted by yellow gravel pits. 



Beyond is a little town and a low grey spire, neigh- 

 boured by sycamores that stretch out horizontal boughs 

 of broad leaves and new yellow-green flower tassels over 

 long grass. Past the town — rapidly and continually 

 resuming its sleep after the hooting of motor-cars — begins 

 a wide and stately domain. At its edge are cottages 

 doddering with age, but trim and flowery, and assuredly 

 wearing the livery of the ripe, grave house of brick that 

 stands on the grassy ascent above them, among new-leaved 

 beech masses and isolated thorns dreaming over their 

 shadows. That grove of limes, fair and decorous, leading 

 up to the house is the work of Nature and the squire. 

 His chestnut and pine plantations succeed. And now a 

 pollard beech, bossy-rooted on a mound of moss and 

 crumbling earth, its grotesque torso decorated as by 

 childish hands with new leaves hanging among mighty 

 boughs that are themselves a mansion for squirrel and 

 jay and willow wren and many shadows, looks grimly 

 down at the edge of a wood and asks for the wayfarer's 

 passport — has he lived well, does he love this world, is 

 he bold and free and kind? — and if he have it not seals 

 him with melancholy as he enters among the innumer- 

 able leaves of innumerable beeches beginning to respond 

 to the straight, still, after-sunset rain, while the last 

 cuckoos cry and the last footsteps and wheels of the world 

 die away behind. The foliage has a pale, almost white, 

 light of its own among the darkly dripping boughs, and 



