1 68 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



again and filled the mind with the fairest images of soli- 

 tude — solitude where a maid, thinking of naught, un- 

 thought of, unseen, combs out her yellow hair and lets 

 her spirit slip down into the tresses — where a man fearful 

 of his kind ascends out of the deeps of himself so that his 

 eyes look bravely and his face unstiffens and unwrinkles 

 and his motion and gesture is fast and free — where a 

 child walks and stops and runs and sings in careless joy 

 that takes him winding far out into abysses of eternity 

 and makes him free of them, so that years afterward the 

 hour and place and sky return, and the eternity on which 

 they opened as a casement, but not the child, not the 



joy. 



I like trees for the cool evening voices of their many 

 leaves, for their cloudy forms linked to earth by stately 

 stems — for the pale lifting of the sycamore leaves in 

 breezes and also their drooping, hushed and massed 

 repose, for the myriad division of the light ash leaves — for 

 their straight pillars and for the twisted branch work, 

 for their still shade and their rippling or calm shimmering 

 or dimly glowing light, for the quicksilver drip of dawn, 

 for their solemnity and their dancing, for all their sounds 

 and motions — their slow-heaved sighs, their nocturnal 

 murmurs, their fitful fingerings at thunder time, their 

 swishing and tossing and hissing in violent rain, the roar 

 of their congregations before the south-west wind when 

 it seems that they must lift up the land and fly away 

 with it, for their rustlings of welcome in harvest heat 

 — for their kindliness and their serene remoteness and 

 inhumanity, and especially the massiest of the trees that 

 have also the glory of motion, the sycamores, which are 

 the chief tree of Cornwall, as the beeches and yews are 



