GREEN FLOWERS 



DAY, it was, of moist breezes and low 

 pearl -coloured cloud that now massed 

 for the down-sending of showers, now 

 dislimned magically and revealed the blue 

 air and noonday sun. Beneath the changing sky 

 a great hill swept upwards a hill of many gradients 

 and pleasant sights at every step. It rose and 

 wound through accustomed scenes of the West. 

 Under lofty banks the way was very steep, and sharp 

 acclivities gave the wanderer pause ; but as its slope 

 decreased, the banks correspondingly dwarfed and 

 dwindled until a man might look over the hedges of 

 polled hazel and survey field and forest. Here were 

 spinnies of larch and pine, set cunningly in rota- 

 tion by sportsmen long since dust ; here orchards 

 rose, all silver-grey under the misty light ; here lay 

 meadow, fallow, and great planes of remote woodland, 

 while, closing the spacious outlook, there stretched 

 a haze of sea, framed by the sky, and the slopes of 

 hills. Close at hand, nearer than the grazing cattle 

 or the dappled drab and monochrome of clustered 

 fruit trees, extended a field, mother-naked from the 

 share ; and here upland rook and sea-faring gull 



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