84 My Wood. 



A few late lingering daffodils may still be seen near 

 this bit of water, and waver and gleam in the light 

 of the sun, bending and beckoning, though no wind 

 seems to touch them. Do they really move, or is it an 

 illusion of the eye or of the mind ? Anyway, that 

 discovery of Darwin, that every part of every plant is 

 constantly making little circles in the air, moving many 

 times in every minute, comes to the mind, and seems 

 to find evidence here. Here and there, a tree that has 

 been cut down burgeons afresh, and the green twigs 

 that spring round it in beautiful circle shine as if with 

 some reflected light, which you cannot rightly trace to 

 its source; for it would seem as though they were 

 completely overshaded. The hazels that have been 

 coppiced put on their airy green, and whenever you 

 come to the border of a moister spot (for water trickles 

 down the wood in wet weather in many indefinite 

 courses), there are a few oziers, which, as you attempt 

 to pass through them and push them apart, by their 

 swinging afterwards to and fro for a short while, 

 recall Mrs. Barrett Browning's fine image in "Lady 

 Geraldine's Courtship " : — 



" The book lay open, and my thought flew from it, taking from it 

 A vibration and impulsion to an end beyond its own, 

 As the branch of a green osier, when a child would overcome it, 

 Springs up freely from its claspings, and goes swinging in the 

 sun." 



Along these watercourses always, except in long 

 periods of dry weather, more or less moist, are alders, 

 sallows, and here and there a willow. It is almost 

 incredible the rapid growth of some of these. The 

 hazel-stubs, dotted in here and there, have their own 

 story to tell of progress, marked to the eye by the 

 difference of bark in the yearling shoots — some of 



