298 
BItAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
find that the influences of nature have a balm for the 
recesses of the deepest sorrow, and that a spirit of gloom 
and discontent is an iniquity against the universal spirit 
of love, which fills the earth with gladness. 
Push on, for the voices multiply both near and far, 
and the hour of sunset approaches. Wc must cross the 
sheep-lea and the broad lawn meadows before we can 
rest our limbs, and in reverie recal these pictures. 
What is that sharp rasping sound ? It is the mower, 
whetting his scythe in yonder meadows, where the 
work of haymaking has commenced. What a rich 
waving sea of emerald and golden billows is the uninown 
hay-field! How calm it lies in the beauty of the sun¬ 
light, with its spikes of chaffy blossoms and sprinkling 
of buttercups and cowslips! And beyond, the homely 
farmstead rises half-hidden amid tall elms, and leaning 
upon the sky like the shadowy painting of a dream. 
There are groups of sturdy men, with iron sinews and 
sunburt faces, all occupied in the busy work of the field. 
The mower sweeps down grass and flowers altogether, 
laying prostrate the pride of the summer, and turning 
swath upon swath with his sinewy arm, mingling the 
star-like daisy, the honey-scented clover, the buttercups, 
yellow trefoils, and long grass altogether; and before 
the sun has sunk into the west, their beauty will have 
perished for ever. He heeds not their beauty, but, 
like a destroying angel, hews down all before him— 
perhaps without a thought that he is thus the emblem of 
death. He leaves them piled ridge upon ridge, until the 
field is at last filled with round hillocks, beneath which 
the flowers lie, withered and dead, as in sepulchres. 
