262 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



cow fastened to the milking-stall and munching grains. 

 Soon will the milk and honey flow. The reaping- 

 machine whirrs; the wheelwrights have mended the 

 waggons' wheels and patched their sides; they stand 

 outside their lodges. 



There is a quarter of a sloping wheat-field reaped; the 

 shocks stand out above the silvery stubble in the evening 

 like rocks out of a moonlight sea. The unreaped corn is 

 like a tawny coast; and all is calm, with the quiet of 

 evening heavens fallen over the earth. This beauty of 

 the ripe Demeter standing in the August land is incom- 

 parable. It reminds one of the poet who said that he had 

 seen a maid who looked like a fountain on a green lawn 

 when the south wind blows in June; and one whose smile 

 was as memorable as the new moon in the first still mild 

 evening of the year, when it is seen for a moment only 

 over the dark hills; and one whose walking was more 

 kindling to the blood than good ale by a winter fire on an 

 endless evening among friends; but that now he has met 

 another, and when he is with her or thinks of her he 

 becomes as one that is blind and deaf to all other things. 



But a few days and the bryony leaves are palest yellow 

 in the hedge. Rooks are innumerable about the land, but 

 their cawing, like all other sounds, like all the early 

 bronze and rose and gold of the leaves, is muffled by the 

 mist which endures right through the afternoon; and all 

 day falls the gentle rain. In the hillside hop garden two 

 long lines of women and children, red and white and 

 black, are destroying the golden green of the hops, and 

 they are like two caterpillars destroying a leaf. Pleasant 

 it is now to see the white smoke from the oast house 

 pouring solidly like curving plumes into the still rain, and 



