The Life of the Fields | Page 2

Something in the odour of these umbelliferous plants, perhaps, is not
quite liked; if brushed or bruised they give out a bitter greenish scent.
Under their cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against
or on the stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain
supports. With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in
the ditch itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge
was wrapped and thickened. No cunning of glance could see through it;
it would have needed a ladder to help any one look over.
It was between the may and the June roses. The may-bloom had fallen,
and among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that
would feed the redwings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed,
straight and towering while there was a thorn, or an ash sapling, or a
yellow-green willow to uphold them, and then curving over towards the
meadow. The buds were on them, but not yet open; it was between the
may and the rose.
As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible
portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so
the air lingering among the woods and hedges--green waves and
billows--became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched
hawthorn leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, narrow ash sprays and oval
willows; from vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under;
brushed from the waving grasses and stiffening corn, the dust of the
sunshine was borne along and breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to
the music of bees and birds, the stream of the atmosphere became a
living thing. It was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The
strength of the earth went up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus
on the food of the Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth

of the summer--to the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature
in the grass, up to the highest swallow. Winter shows us Matter in its
dead form, like the Primary rocks, like granite and basalt--clear but
cold and frozen crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing into life,
sap rising from the earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of
light entering the solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves.
Living things leap in the grass, living things drift upon the air, living
things are coming forth to breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer
does the immense weight of Matter--the dead, the crystallised--press
ponderously on the thinking mind. The whole office of Matter is to
feed life--to feed the green rushes, and the roses that are about to be; to
feed the swallows above, and us that wander beneath them. So much
greater is this ween and common rush than all the Alps.
Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just visible as he passes;
did he pause, the light would he apparent through their texture. On the
wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is a
prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more delicate than the
minute filaments on a swallow's quill, more delicate than the pollen of
a flower. They are formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is
resolved into the means and organs of life! Though not often
consciously recognised, perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to
watch the earth, the dead particles, resolving themselves into the living
case of life, to see the seed-leaf push aside the clod and become by
degrees the perfumed flower. From the tiny mottled egg come the
wings that by-and-by shall pass the immense sea. It is in this
marvellous transformation of clods and cold matter into living things
that the joy and the hope of summer reside. Every blade of grass, each
leaf, each separate floret and petal, is an inscription speaking of hope.
Consider the grasses and the oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue
butterfly--they are one and all a sign and token showing before our eyes
earth made into life. So that my hope becomes as broad as the horizon
afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on every bough, reflected in the
gleam of every flower. There is so much for us yet to come, so much to
be gathered, and enjoyed. Not for you and me, now, but for our race,
who will ultimately use this magical secret for their happiness. Earth
holds secrets enough to give them the life of the fabled Immortals. My
heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately the sunshine

and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were,
interwoven into man's existence. He shall take from