198 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



tresses and heaven-wide drapery of gods, and some small 

 and white like traveller's-joy, as if up there also they 

 travelled and knew the houseless joy along the undulat- 

 ing highway of the deep wind. And the little house 

 was as a watch-tower planted in the middle swirl of the 

 current that was scouring valley and wood and sky and 

 water and, as far as it could, the dull eyes and duller 

 brains of men. 



In summer I saw it at the end of one of those days of 

 sun and wind and perfectly clear air when the earth 

 appears immensely heavy and great and strong — so that 

 for a moment it is possible to know the majesty of its 

 course in space — and the sheep very light, like mere 

 down, as they crawl in a flock over the grass. Swathes 

 and wisps of white cloud were strewn over the high blue 

 sky as if by haymakers. But the lanes were deep, and for 

 miles at a time nearly shut out the sky, and all the day 

 the lanes were empty and wholly mine. Here the high 

 banks were thickly grown with wild parsnip, and its 

 umbels of small yellow-green flow ers, fragrant and a little 

 over-sweet, were alive and, as it were, boiling over with 

 bees and the sunniest flies. There the hazel was laced with 

 white bryony, whose leaves and pale tendrils went hover- 

 ing and swimming and floating over the hedge. In one 

 place an elder-tree stood out of the hedge, stiff, with few 

 branches, and every leaf upon them red as a rose. Wher- 

 ever there was a waste strip beside the road the tall 

 yellow ragwort grew densely, each of the nearer flowers 

 as hard and clear as brass, the farther ones dimly glowing 

 and half lost in the green mist of their leaves and the 

 haze of the brightness of their multitudes. Where the 

 road changed into an unused lane the grass was tall, and 



