Pageant of Summer | Page 4

edge--are drawing their strength from the atmosphere. Exceedingly
minute as these vibrations must be, their numbers perhaps may give
them a volume almost reaching in the aggregate to the power of the ear.
Besides the quivering leaf, the swinging grass, the fluttering bird's wing,
and the thousand oval membranes which innumerable insects whirl
about, a faint resonance seems to come from the very earth itself. The
fervour of the sunbeams descending in a tidal flood rings on the strung
harp of earth. It is this exquisite undertone, heard and yet unheard,
which brings the mind into sweet accordance with the wonderful
instrument of nature.
By the apple tree there is a low bank, where the grass is less tall and
admits the heat direct to the ground; here there are blue flowers--bluer
than the wings of my favourite butterflies--with white centres--the
lovely bird's-eyes, or veronica. The violet and cowslip, bluebell and
rose, are known to thousands; the veronica is overlooked. The
ploughboys know it, and the wayside children, the mower and those
who linger in fields, but few else. Brightly blue and surrounded by
greenest grass, imbedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the
grass, these growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves the sun.
From this island I look down into the depth of the grasses. Red sorrel
spires--deep drinkers of reddest sun wine--stand the boldest, and in
their numbers threaten the buttercups. To these in the distance they give
the gipsy- gold tint--the reflection of fire on plates of the precious metal.
It will show even on a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say.
Gather the open marguerite daisies, and they seem large--so wide a disc,

such fingers of rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much
green. Clover heads of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden
footpath. Like clubs from Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied in
shape: some tend to a point--the foxtails--some are hard and cylindrical;
others, avoiding the club shape, put forth the slenderest branches with
fruit of seed at the ends, which tremble as the air goes by. Their stalks
are ripening and becoming of the colour of hay while yet the long
blades remain green.
Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails are succeeded by
foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow blades, but never become
monotonous; sorrel stands by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed
of veronica at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of
flowers, and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows oak and elm
ranks with elm, but the woodlands are pleasant; however many times
reduplicated, their beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days; the
sun rises on the same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue
sky, but did we ever have enough of them? No, not in a hundred years!
There seems always a depth, somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that has
not been seen through, a corner full of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree,
which may give us something. Bees go by me as I stand under the
apple, but they pass on for the most part bound on a long journey,
across to the clover fields or up to the thyme lands; only a few go down
into the mowing-grass. The hive bees are the most impatient of insects;
they cannot bear to entangle their wings beating against grasses or
boughs. Not one will enter a hedge. They like an open and level surface,
places cropped by sheep, the sward by the roadside, fields of clover,
where the flower is not deep under grass.

II.
It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the
mowing- grass. If entangled, the humble-bee climbs up a sorrel stem
and takes wing, without any sign of annoyance. His broad back with
tawny bar buoyantly glides over the golden buttercups. He hums to
himself as he goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cunning work

in glass receives his labour, no artificial saccharine aids him when the
beams of the sun are cold, there is no step to his house that he may
alight in comfort; the way is not made clear for him that he may start
straight for the flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if
the storm descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well
thatched and tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a
crooked iron nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced
with a thorn but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens
at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly