2i8 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



thereon; and far away the light after rain billows grandly- 

 over the mounded forest. Many a golden stream pours 

 through the dark trees. Oaks succeed, closing in lich- 

 ened multitudes about a grassy-rutted ferny road, but 

 suddenly giving way to beeches pallid and huge. One 

 lies prone across the road, still green of leaf, having torn 

 up a mound of earth and bracken and bramble as large 

 as a house in its upheaval. Others have lost great 

 branches, and the mossy earth is ploughed by their fall. 

 They seem to have fought in the night and to be slumber- 

 ing with dreams of battle to come; and their titanic 

 passions keep far away the influence of the blue sky and 

 silver clouds that laugh out unconcerned after the rain. 



After them birches and birchlings grow out of the 

 heather backed by a solid wall of oaks. And again there 

 are many beeches over mossy golden turf, and one tree 

 of symmetrical rounded foliage makes a circle of shade 

 where nothing grows, but all about it a crowd of dwarf 

 brackens twinkle and look like listeners at an oracle. 

 Beyond, countless pillars of dark pines tower above green 

 grass. Then the road forks; a shapely oak, still holding 

 up dead arms through clouds of greenery, stands at one 

 side; at the other a green road wanders away under 

 beeches in stately attitudes and at ceremonious distance 

 from one another : straight ahead, open low meadows 

 surround a reedy water where coot and moorhen cry to 

 each other among willow islets and the reflex of a bright 

 and windy heaven. And yet once more the road pierces 

 the dense woodland roar, form and colour buried as it 

 were in sound, except where a space of smoothest turf 

 expands from the road, and out of the crimson berries of 

 an old thorn comes the voice of a robin singing persist- 



