SUMMER 183 



dark prophets persuading to silence and a stillness like their 

 own. Away on the lesser Downs the fields of pale oats 

 are liquid within their border of dark woods; they also 

 propose deep draughts of oblivion and rest. Then, again, 

 there is the field — the many fields — where a regiment of 

 shocks of oats are ranked under the white moon between 

 rows of elms on the level Sussex land not far from the 

 sea. The contrast of the airy matter underfoot and the 

 thin moon overhead, with the massy dark trees, as it were, 

 suspended between; the numbers and the order of the 

 sheaves; their inviolability, though protected but by the 

 gateway through which they are seen — all satisfy the 

 soul as they can never satisfy the frame. Then there are 

 the mists before heat which make us think of autumn or 

 not, according to our tempers. All night the aspens have 

 been shivering and the owls exulting under a clear full 

 moon and above the silver of a great dew. You climb 

 the steep chalk slope, through the privet and dog- wood 

 coppice; among the scattered junipers — in this thick 

 haze as in darkness they group themselves so as to make 

 fantastic likenesses of mounted men, animals, monsters; 

 over the dead earth In the shade of the broad yews, and 

 thence suddenly under lightsome sprays of guelder-rose 

 and their cherry-coloured berries; over the tufted turf; 

 and then through the massed beeches, cold and dark as a 

 church and silent; and so out to the level waste cornland 

 at the top, to the flints and the clay. There a myriad 

 oriflammes of ragwort are borne up on tall stems of equal 

 height, straight and motionless, and near at hand quite 

 clear, but farther away forming a green mist until, 

 farther yet, all but the flowery surface is invisible, and 

 that is but a glow. The stillness of the green and golden 



