A BETTER EDEN 239 



yolk through the luminous white. Such solitary eggs 

 are not altogether uncommon ; but this was a prodigy, 

 for the date was the third week of September ; neverthe 

 less it was already known that the wood pigeons were 

 breeding. Two nests are in being in the spinney ; and 

 each evening as the golden glow spreads over the field 

 we hear, as if in praise of the light, the rhythmic croon 

 and coo of a pigeon from the clump of trees in the corner. 

 Now, if ever, you feel what Wordsworth meant when 

 he preferred the stock-dove but did he mean the stock 

 dove ? before the nightingale, because he sang 



Of serious faith and inward glee. 



It is a season of &quot; inward glee &quot; ; and Tennyson, too, 

 knew what he was about when he wrote (in perhaps the 

 best unrhymed lyric in the language) &quot; the happy autumn 

 fields. 73 For a sort of rich peacefulness, you will not 

 discover the world over, a scene to compare with Eng 

 lish autumn fields and their hedgerow frames. 



You might have feared that such neglected fields, to 

 be found in most counties, would have destroyed the old 

 English charm, would have impoverished our humane 

 landscape ; and here and there it is so, where thorns and 

 briars, where thistle and dock, have seized the vacant 

 room. That day of the discovery of the pigeon s egg a 

 nugget in a slag-heap I walked over one field that was 

 sheer melancholy. The creeping thistle and the royal 

 thistle, dock and ragwort, and a number of other devils 

 had invaded the once swept and garnished acres. Except 

 for a certain colourfulness, much enhanced by a sprink 

 ling of succory, it was a pitiful sight. It had the un 

 pleasantness that Goldsmith found in Sweet Auburn 

 where 



Half a tillage mocked the smiling plain. 



