GOING WESTWARD 213 



mossy-pedestalled beeches lie on either side of the road, 

 and grassy tracks lead to thatched cottages in the woods. 

 A grey-clouded silver sky moves overhead. Along the 

 road the telegraph wires go humming the one shrill note 

 in this great harmony of men and woods and sky. 

 Beyond, a broad champaign of corn and grey grass heaves 

 from the woodland edge. The road is gay with red 

 polished fruit and equally red soft leaves, with darkest 

 purple and bronze and wine-red and green berries and 

 leaves, and beam foliage still pure green and white. So 

 high now are the unkempt hedges that the land is hid and 

 only the sky appears above the coloured trees : except at 

 a meeting of ways when a triangular patch of turf is 

 sacred to burdock, ragwort and thistle and — touching the 

 dust of the road — the lowly silverweed; an oak over- 

 hangs, yet the little open space admits a vision of the 

 elephantine Downs going west in the rain. In a moment 

 the world is once again this narrow one of the high- 

 hedged lane, where I see and touch with the eye and enjoy 

 the shapes of each bole and branch in turn, their bone- 

 like shapes, their many colours of the wood itself, 

 wrinkled and grooved, or overlaid by pale green mould, 

 silver lichen or dark green moss. Each bend in the 

 road is different. At one all the leaves are yellow but 

 green-veined, the bramble, the hazel, the elder; and there 

 is a little chalk pit below, fresh white and overhung by 

 yew and the dark purple elder berries, small but distinct : 

 at another there is a maple of exquisite small leaves and 

 numerous accordingly, a fair-built tree in a lovely atti- 

 tude and surmounted by a plume, only a small plume, of 

 traveller's-joy. In Swineherd's County they call it 

 " Angel's hair." 



