THE LAP OF PROSERPINE 137 



and omens, they judge the end of the world is 

 nigh ; and for them and their practical purposes it is. 

 Yet Nature has looked to this matter with all the 

 rest, and next Summer will not want for necessary 

 bluebottles any more than it will lack violets, and 

 rosebuds, and honey-bees. These last still work a 

 little, and the ivy blossoms — high overhead — are full 

 of their pleasant murmur, like a soft echo from bygone 

 Summer. 



Of other flowers, the wood-strawberry, and red 

 campion and nipple-wort, alone light the desolation. 

 Rime of white frosts lies under the northern side of 

 the hedge-banks, and each curled leaf is touched with 

 it. On dry days there is the crisp sigh and patter of 

 the little leaf-ghosts where they fly in air, or seem to 

 run like fairy battalions at the double along the 

 ground. Red evening light brings out the traceries 

 of interwoven boughs and the distinctive character of 

 the naked tree skeletons above them. Then fall the 

 latter rains, and since little business longer challenges 

 the eye, one's thought may burrow with the roots 

 underground, where there spreads that vast laboratory 

 from which spring the glories of the seasons. Here 

 is a subterranean world at least as wonderful as that 

 I see ; and within its labyrinth, from the tiny thread- 

 like fibrils of a germinating grass-seed to the ancient 

 oak tree's roots, huge as the fabled snake, like labour 

 of subtraction, selection, storing, building up, and 

 growth proceeds without intermission under the night 

 of the deep, sweet earth. 



