202 MY DEVON YEAR 



glimmers with the morning and evening sky-colours 

 of Summer. 



Among the altars now ablaze with feast-day splen- 

 dours, and sweet with incense proper to the goddess 

 whose mellow hour they celebrate, I know a little 

 temple of Pomona, a cloister of half a hundred pillars 

 — trees that atone for the paucity of their ranks by 

 the vigour of their lusty age and splendour of their 

 bearing. Here, where the old-time place nestled and 

 spread a jewelled heart to the sun, I, a little lad, had 

 often frolicked with the fowls and calves and other 

 young things. I had strutted happy under networks 

 of naked branches in wintertime ; beneath the trans- 

 parent verdure of new foliage and the snow and 

 carmine of spring blossom ; among the fruit on boughs 

 and underfoot at the fall of the year. Here, by feats 

 of infant arms, I climbed into the forks of the trees 

 and plucked my first apple ; here I wandered content 

 to dream in all the gold and glory of a child's autumn ; 

 here I watched the shaky new-born lambs, found my 

 earliest bird's nest, bore the first primrose with some 

 ceremony to those who loved me, chased the butter- 

 flies, harried a procession of little pigs, and fled before 

 the gaunt presence of their mother. 



And here, but yesterday, I came again, to find that 

 domain of blissful days, something shrunk as to its 

 borders, but in all other aspects as good and precious 

 as in my childish eyes. Mystery haunted it afore- 

 time ; and mysteries, deeper far than those that young 

 minds spin of shadows, still inhabited it. The orchard 



