A BABN. 8l 



dust of the road. Loose straws lie across the foot- 

 path, trodden flat by passing feet; straws have 

 wandered across the road and lodged on the mound, 

 and others have roamed still farther round the corner. 

 Between the gatepost and the wall that encloses the 

 rickyard more straws are jammed, and yet more are 

 borne up by the nettles beneath it. 



Mosses have grown over the old red* brick wall, 

 both on the top and following the lines of the mortar, 

 and bunches of wall grasses flourish along the top. 

 The wheat, and barley, and hay carted home to the 

 rickyard contain the seeds of innumerable plants, 

 many of which, dropping to the ground, come up 

 next year. The trodden earth round where the ricks 

 stood seems favourable to their early appearance; 

 the first poppy blooms here, though its colour is paler 

 than those which come afterwards in the fields. 



In spring most of the ricks are gone, threshed and 

 sold, but there remains the vast pile of straw — always 

 straw — and the three-cornered stump of a hay-rick 

 which displays bands of different hues, one above the 

 other, like the strata of a geological map. Some of 

 the hay was put up damp, some in good condition, 

 and some had been browned by bad weather before 

 I being carted. 



About the straw-rick, and over the chaff that 

 everywhere strews the earth, numerous fowls search, 

 and by the gateway Chanticleer proudly stands, tall 

 and upright, the king of the rickyard still, as he and 

 his ancestors have been these hundreds of years. 

 Under the granary, which is built on stone staddles, 

 iO exclude the mice, some turkeys are huddled 



