WALKS IN THE WHEAT-FIELDS. 129 
thorn bushes—all so distinct and close under that you 
might almost fear to breathe for fear of dimming the 
mirror. The few white clouds sailing over seemed to 
belong to the fields on which their shadows were now 
foreshortened, now lengthened, as if they were really 
part of the fields, like the crops, and the azure sky so 
low down as to be the roof of the house and not at alla 
separate thing. And the sun a lamp that you might 
almost have pushed along his course faster with your 
hand; a loving and interesting sun that wanted the 
wheat to ripen, and stayed there in the slow-drawn arc 
of the summer day to lend a hand. Sun and sky and 
ciouds close here and not across any planetary space, 
but working with us in the same field, shoulder to 
shoulder, with man. Then you might see the white 
doves yonder flutter up suddenly out of the trees by the 
farm, little flecks of white clouds themselves, and every- 
where all throughout the plain an exquisite silence, a 
delicious repose, not one clang or harshness of sound to 
shatter the beauty of it. There you might stand on the 
high down among the thyme and watch it, hour after hour, 
and still no interruption ; nothing to break it up. It was 
something like the broad folio of an ancient illuminated 
manuscript, in gold, gules, blue, green ; with foliated 
scrolls and human figures, somewhat clumsy and thick, 
4 
but quaintly drawn, and bold in their intense realism. — -. 
There was another wheat-field by the side of which I 
used to walk sometimes in the evenings, as the grains in 
the ears began to grow firm. The path ran for a inile 
beside it—a mile of wheat in one piece—all those 
million million stalks the same height, all with about 
the same number of grains in each ear, all ripening to- 
gether. The hue of the surface travelled along as you 
approached ; the tint of yellow shifted farther like the 
k 
