Nature Near London | Page 4

to detect where he is now.
That slight motion in the hedge, however, conveys an impression of
something living everywhere within.
There are birds in the oaks overhead whose voice is audible though
they are themselves unseen. From out of the mowing grass, finches rise
and fly to the hedge; from the hedge again others fly out, and,
descending into the grass, are concealed as in a forest. A thrush
travelling along the hedgerow just outside goes by the gateway within a
yard. Bees come upon the light wind, gliding with it, but with their
bodies aslant across the line of current. Butterflies flutter over the
mowing grass, hardly clearing the bennets. Many-coloured insects
creep up the sorrel stems and take wing from the summit.
Everything gives forth a sound of life. The twittering of swallows from
above, the song of greenfinches in the trees, the rustle of hawthorn
sprays moving under the weight of tiny creatures, the buzz upon the
breeze; the very flutter of the butterflies' wings, noiseless as it is, and
the wavy movement of the heated air across the field cause a sense of
motion and of music.
The leaves are enlarging, and the sap rising, and the hard trunks of the
trees swelling with its flow; the grass blades pushing upwards; the
seeds completing their shape; the tinted petals uncurling. Dreamily
listening, leaning on the gate, all these are audible to the inner senses,
while the ear follows the midsummer hum, now sinking, now
sonorously increasing over the oaks. An effulgence fills the southern
boughs, which the eye cannot sustain, but which it knows is there.
The sun at its meridian pours forth his light, forgetting, in all the

inspiration of his strength and glory, that without an altar-screen of
green his love must scorch. Joy in life; joy in life. The ears listen, and
want more: the eyes are gratified with gazing, and desire yet further;
the nostrils are filled with the sweet odours of flower and sap. The
touch, too, has its pleasures, dallying with leaf and flower. Can you not
almost grasp the odour-laden air and hold it in the hollow of the hand?
Leaving the spot at last, and turning again into the lane, the shadows
dance upon the white dust under the feet, irregularly circular spots of
light surrounded with umbra shift with the shifting branches. By the
wayside lie rings of dandelion stalks carelessly cast down by the child
who made them, and tufts of delicate grasses gathered for their beauty
but now sprinkled with dust. Wisps of hay hang from the lower boughs
of the oaks where they brushed against the passing load.
After a time, when the corn is ripening, the herb betony flowers on the
mounds under the oaks. Following the lane down the hill and across the
small furze common at the bottom, the marks of traffic fade away, the
dust ceases, and is succeeded by sward. The hedgerows on either side
are here higher than ever, and are thickly fringed with bramble bushes,
which sometimes encroach on the waggon ruts in the middle, and are
covered with flowers, and red, and green, and ripe blackberries
together.
Green rushes line the way, and green dragon flies dart above them.
Thistledown is pouting forth from the swollen tops of thistles crowded
with seed. In a gateway the turf has been worn away by waggon wheels
and the hoofs of cart horses, and the dry heat has pulverised the
crumbling ruts. Three hen pheasants and a covey of partridges that have
been dusting themselves here move away without much haste at the
approach of footsteps--the pheasants into the thickets, and the
partridges through the gateway. The shallow holes in which they were
sitting can be traced on the dust, and there are a few small feathers
lying about.
A barley field is within the gate; the mowers have just begun to cut it
on the opposite side. Next to it is a wheat field; the wheat has been cut
and stands in shocks. From the stubble by the nearest shock two turtle

doves rise, alarmed, and swiftly fly towards a wood which bounds the
field. This wood, indeed, upon looking again, clearly bounds not this
field only, but the second and the third, and so far as the eye can see
over the low hedges of the corn, the trees continue. The green lane as it
enters the wood, becomes wilder and rougher at every step, widening,
too, considerably.
In the centre the wheels of timber carriages, heavily laden with trunks
of trees which were dragged through by straining teams in the rainy
days of spring, have left vast ruts, showing that they must have sunk to
the axle in the soft clay. These then filled with water, and