Field and Hedgerow | Page 2

coltsfoot on the heavy, thick
clods, the trodden chickweed despised at the foot of the gate-post, so
common and small, and yet so dear to me. Every blade of grass was
mine, as though I had planted it separately. They were all my pets, as
the roses the lover of his garden tends so faithfully. All the grasses of
the meadow were my pets, I loved them all; and perhaps that was why I
never had a 'pet,' never cultivated a flower, never kept a caged bird, or
any creature. Why keep pets when every wild free hawk that passed
overhead in the air was mine? I joyed in his swift, careless flight, in the
throw of his pinions, in his rush over the elms and miles of woodland;
it was happiness to see his unchecked life. What more beautiful than
the sweep and curve of his going through the azure sky? These were
my pets, and all the grass. Under the wind it seemed to dry and become
grey, and the starlings running to and fro on the surface that did not
sink now stood high above it and were larger. The dust that drifted
along blessed it and it grew. Day by day a change; always a note to

make. The moss drying on the tree trunks, dog's-mercury stirring under
the ash-poles, bird's-claw buds of beech lengthening; books upon books
to be filled with these things. I cannot think how they manage without
me.
To-day through the window-pane I see a lark high up against the grey
cloud, and hear his song. I cannot walk about and arrange with the buds
and gorse-bloom; how does he know it is the time for him to sing?
Without my book and pencil and observing eye, how does he
understand that the hour has come? To sing high in the air, to chase his
mate over the low stone wall of the ploughed field, to battle with his
high-crested rival, to balance himself on his trembling wings outspread
a few yards above the earth, and utter that sweet little loving kiss, as it
were, of song--oh, happy, happy days! So beautiful to watch as if he
were my own, and I felt it all! It is years since I went out amongst them
in the old fields, and saw them in the green corn; they must be dead,
dear little things, by now. Without me to tell him, how does this lark
to-day that I hear through the window know it is his hour?
The green hawthorn buds prophesy on the hedge; the reed pushes up in
the moist earth like a spear thrust through a shield; the eggs of the
starling are laid in the knot-hole of the pollard elm--common eggs, but
within each a speck that is not to be found in the cut diamond of two
hundred carats--the dot of protoplasm, the atom of life. There was one
row of pollards where they always began laying first. With a big stick
in his beak 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, I 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