26 VILLAGE ENGLAND 



expressed (by the best verb in literature) in Hood s 

 &quot; Song of the Shirt.&quot; The swallows do not &quot; twit him 

 with the spring.&quot; However little his conscious appre 

 ciation, he owes to their blue wings and happy twitter 

 some fragment of that &quot; deep power of joy &quot; in which 

 Wordsworth and Lord Grey found the source of all 

 that was best in life. Such things enable man to recognise 

 &quot; a grandeur in the beatings of the heart.&quot; &quot; Such inter 

 course was mine&quot; said Wordsworth as he skated in 

 winter on Westmorland waters. 



Twas mine among the fields both day and night 



And by the waters, all the summer long, 



And by the frosty season when the sun 



Was set and, visible for many a mile, 



The cottage windows through the twilight played. 



