Pageant of Summer | Page 5

he may escape the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to
the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm,
winding in and out and round the branched buttercups, along the banks
of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and
despises nothing. His nest is under the rough grasses and the mosses of
the mound, a mere tunnel beneath the fibres and matted surface. The
hawthorn overhangs it, the fern grows by, red mice rustle past.
It thunders, and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through
the treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched
branches the lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like
the swish of a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a
crackle as if a tree fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the
white florets of the wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself,
and suddenly a fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them
out into the fields; but the humble-bee's home, under moss and matted
fibres, remains uninjured. His house at the root of the king of trees, like
a cave in the rock, is safe. The storm passes and the sun comes out, the
air is the sweeter and the richer for the rain, like verses with a rhyme;
there will be more honey in the flowers. Humble he is, but wild; always
in the field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets; always wild
and humming to his flowers. Therefore I like the humble-bee, being, at
heart at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and
by the brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the
impression of being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on
the autumn sky. The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground,
and the livid flame to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little
bats do in the evening.

Caught by such a cloud, I have stayed under thick larches at the edge of
plantations. They are no shelter, but conceal one perfectly. The wood
pigeons come home to their nest trees; in larches they seem to have
permanent nests, almost like rooks. Kestrels, too, come home to the
wood. Pheasants crow, but not from fear--from defiance; in fear they
scream. The boom startles them, and they instantly defy the sky. The
rabbits quietly feed on out in the field between the thistles and rushes
that so often grow in woodside pastures, quietly hopping to their
favourite places, utterly heedless how heavy the echoes may be in the
hollows of the wooded hills. Till the rain comes they take no heed
whatever, but then make for shelter. Blackbirds often make a good deal
of noise; but the soft turtle-doves coo gently, let the lightning be as
savage as it will. Nothing has the least fear. Man alone, more senseless
than a pigeon, put a god in vapour; and to this day, though the printing
press has set a foot on every threshold, numbers bow the knee when
they hear the roar the timid dove does not heed. So trustful are the
doves, the squirrels, the birds of the branches, and the creatures of the
field. Under their tuition let us rid ourselves of mental terrors, and face
death itself as calmly as they do the livid lightning; so trustful and so
content with their fate, resting in themselves and unappalled. If but by
reason and will I could reach the godlike calm and courage of what we
so thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I should lead a nearly perfect
life.
The bark of the ancient apple tree under which I have been standing is
shrunken like iron which has been heated and let cool round the rim of
a wheel. For a hundred years the horses have rubbed against it while
feeding in the aftermath. The scales of the bark are gone or smoothed
down and level, so that insects have no hiding-place. There are no
crevices for them, the horsehairs that were caught anywhere have been
carried away by birds for their nests. The trunk is smooth and columnar,
hard as iron. A hundred times the mowing-grass has grown up around it,
the birds have built their nests, the butterflies fluttered by, and the
acorns dropped from the oaks. It is a long, long time, counted by
artificial hours or by the seasons, but it is longer still in another way.
The greenfinch in the hawthorn yonder has been there since I came out,
and all the time has been happily talking to his love. He has left the

hawthorn indeed, but only for a minute or two,