The Life of the Fields | Page 3

all their beauty and
enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a flower is to me so much more than
stalk and petals. When I look in the glass I see that every line in my
face means pessimism; but in spite of my face--that is my experience--I
remain an optimist. Time with an unsteady hand has etched thin
crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows, has cast the original
expression into shadow. Pain and sorrow flow over us with little
ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on the beach. Let us not look at ourselves
but onwards, and take strength from the leaf and the signs of the field.
He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the ideal life of
man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright of mind.
The long grass flowing towards the hedge has reared in a wave against
it. Along the hedge it is higher and greener, and rustles into the very
bushes. There is a mark only now where the footpath was; it passed
close to the hedge, but its place is traceable only as a groove in the
sorrel and seed-tops. Though it has quite filled the path, the grass there
cannot send its tops so high; it has left a winding crease. By the hedge
here stands a moss-grown willow, and its slender branches extend over
the sward. Beyond it is an oak, just apart from the bushes; then the
ground gently rises, and an ancient pollard ash, hollow and black inside,
guards an open gateway like a low tower. The different tone of green
shows that the hedge is there of nut-trees; but one great hawthorn
spreads out in a semicircle, roofing the grass which is yet more verdant
in the still pool (as it were) under it. Next a corner, more oaks, and a
chestnut in bloom. Returning to-this spot an old apple tree stands right
out in the meadow like an island. There seemed just now the tiniest
twinkle of movement by the rushes, but it was lost among the hedge
parsley. Among the grey leaves of the willow there is another flit of
motion; and visible now against the sky there is a little brown bird, not
to be distinguished at the moment from the many other little brown
birds that are known to be about. He got up into the willow from the
hedge parsley somehow, without being seen to climb or fly. Suddenly
he crosses to the tops of the hawthorn and immediately flings himself
up into the air a yard or two, his wings and ruffled crest making a
ragged outline; jerk, jerk, jerk, as if it were with the utmost difficulty he
could keep even at that height. He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and

all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge and out of sight as a stone
into a pond. It is a whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and
nettles. Presently he will go out to the island apple tree and back again
in a minute or two; the pair of them are so fond of each other's
affectionate company they cannot remain apart.
Watching the line of the hedge, about every two minutes, either near at
hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the grass, hovers a
second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover.
Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now
and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart.
They are fly-fishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips and
grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water. A blackbird slips
up into the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut tree.
But these are not visible together, only one at a time and with intervals.
The larger part of the life of the hedge is out of sight. All the
thrush-fledglings, the young blackbirds, and finches are hidden, most of
them on the mound among the ivy, and parsley, and rough grasses,
protected too by a roof of brambles. The nests that still have eggs are
not, like the nests of the early days of April, easily found; they are deep
down in the tangled herbage by the shore of the ditch, or far inside the
thorny thickets which then looked mere bushes, and are now so broad.
Landrails are running in the grass concealed as a man would be in a
wood; they have nests and eggs on the ground for which you may
search in vain till the mowers come.
Up in the corner a fragment of white fur and marks of scratching show
where a doe has been preparing for a litter.