4 FIELD AND HEDGEROW, 
the rook is blown aside like a loose feather in the wind ; 
he knows his building-time from the fathers of his house 
—hereditary knowledge handed down in settled course: 
but the stray things of the hedge, how do they know? 
The great blackbird has planted his nest by the ash-stole, 
open to every one’s view, without a bough to conceal it 
and not a leaf on the ash—nothing but the moss on the 
lower end of the branches. He does not seek cunningly 
for concealment. I think of the drift of time, and I see 
the apple bloom coming and the blue veronica in the 
grass. A thousand thousand buds and leaves and 
flowers and blades of grass, things to note day by day, 
increasing so rapidly that no pencil can put them down 
and no book hold them, not even to number them—and 
how to write the thoughts they give? All these without 
me—how can they manage without me? 
For they were so much to me, I had come to feel that 
I was as much in return to them. The old, old error: 
I love the earth, therefore the earth loves me—I am her 
child—I am Man, the favoured of all creatures. I am 
the centre, and all for me was made. 
In time past, strong of foot, 1 walked gaily up the 
noble hill that leads to Beachy Head from Eastbourne, 
joying greatly in the sun and the wind. Every step 
crumbled up numbers of minute grey shells, empty and 
dry, that crunched under foot like hoar-frost or fragile 
beads. They were very pretty ; it was a shame to crush 
them—such vases as no king’s pottery could make. 
They lay by millions in the depths of the sward, and I 
thought as I broke them unwillingly that each of these 
had once been a house of life. A living creature dwelt 
in each and felt the joy of existence, and was to itself all 
in all—as if the great sun over the hill shone for it, and 
the width of the earth under was for it, and the grase 
