io8 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



ing leaf. But through it all the thrushes sing, and jolly- 

 as their voices are the roars and echoes of the busy thunder 

 quarrying the cliffs of heaven. And then the pleasure 

 of being so wet that you may w^alk through streams and 

 push through thickets and be none the wetter for it. 



Before it is full night the light of the young moon falls 

 for a moment out of a troubled but silent sky upon the 

 young corn, and the tranquil bells are calling over the 

 woods. 



Then in the early morning the air is still and warm, 

 but so moist that there is a soul of coolness in the heat, 

 and never before were the leaves of the sorrel and wood 

 sanicle and woodruff, and the grey-green foliage and pallid 

 yellow flowers of the large celandine, so fair. The 

 sudden wren's song is shrewd and sweet and banishes 

 heaviness. The huge chestnut tree is flowering and full 

 of bees. The parsley towers delicately in bloom. The 

 beech boughs are encased in gliding crystal. The nettles, 

 the millions of nettles in a bed, begin to smell of summer. 

 In the calm and sweet air the turtle-doves murmur and 

 the blackbirds sing — as if time were no more — over the 

 mere. 



The roads, nearly dry again, are now at their best, 

 cool and yet luminous, and at their edges coloured rosy or 

 golden brown by the sheddings of the beeches, those 

 gloves out of which the leaves have forced their way, 

 pinched and crumpled by the confinement. At the bend 

 of a broad road descending under beeches these parallel 

 lines of ruddy chaff give to two or three days in the year 

 a special and exquisite loveliness, if the weather be alter- 

 nately wet and bright and the long white roads and virgin 

 beeches are a temptation. What quests they propose! 



