GOING WESTWARD 221 



blue and white sky, wagtails flutter at the edge and geese 

 launch themselves as if for a voyage. The only sound 

 upon the road is made by the baker's cart carrying a 

 fragrant load. 



After ten miles the road crosses the river and wanders 

 even farther from the highway. Here there are more 

 woods of hazel and oak, and borders where sloe and 

 blackberry shine, polished by rain, among herbage of 

 yellow ragwort and flea-bane, purple knapweed, yellow- 

 ing leaves. The gateways show steep meadows between 

 the woods. One shows two lovers of sixteen years old 

 gathering nuts in the warm sun, the silence, the solitude. 

 The boy bends down and she steps quickly and carelessly 

 upon his back to reach a cluster of six, and then descend- 

 ing looks away for a little while and turns her left cheek 

 to him, softly smiling wordless things to herself, so that 

 her lover could not but lean forward and kiss her golden 

 skin where it is most beautiful beneath her ear and her 

 looped black hair. There is a maid whose ways arc so 

 wonderful and desirable that it would not be more won- 

 derful and desirable if Helen had never grown old and 

 Demeter had kept Persephone. For a day white-throated 

 convolvulus hides all the nettles of life. Of all the 

 delicate passing things I have seen and heard — the slow, 

 languid, gracious closing and unclosing of a pewit's 

 rounded wings as it chooses a clod to alight on; the sound 

 of poplar leaves striving with the sound of rain in a 

 windy summer shower; the glow of elms where an autumn 

 rainbow sets a foot amongst them; the first fire of 

 September lighted among men and books and flowers — not 

 one survives to compare with this gateway vision of a 

 moment on a road I shall never travel again. To rescue 



