The Life of the Fields | Page 7

while they last. Yellow butterflies, and white, broad red admirals, and

sweet blues; think of the kingdom of flowers which is theirs! Heavy
moths burring at the edge of the copse; green, and red, and gold flies:
gnats, like smoke, around the tree-tops; midges so thick over the brook,
as if you could haul a netful; tiny leaping creatures in the grass; bronze
beetles across the path; blue dragonflies pondering on cool leaves of
water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from elm to
elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into
the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on
the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a
starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-like, up a green fern frond.
Finches undulating through the air, shooting themselves with closed
wings, and linnets happy with their young.
Golden dandelion discs--gold and orange--of a hue more beautiful, I
think, than the higher and more visible buttercup. A blackbird,
gleaming, so black is he, splashing in the runlet of water across the
gateway. A ruddy kingfisher swiftly drawing himself as you might
draw a stroke with a pencil, over the surface of the yellow buttercups,
and away above the hedge. Hart's-tongue fern, thick with green, so
green as to be thick with its colour, deep in the ditch under the shady
hazel boughs. White meadow-sweet lifting its tiny florets, and
black-flowered sedges. You must push through the reed grass to find
the sword-flags; the stout willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but
resist the foot like underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy
stoles, and little black moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their
mother, who has dived under the water-grass, and broken the smooth
surface of the duckweed. Yellow loosestrife is rising, thick comfrey
stands at the very edge; the sandpipers run where the shore is free from
bushes. Back by the underwood the prickly and repellent brambles will
presently present us with fruit. For the squirrels the nuts are forming,
green beechmast is there--green wedges under the spray; up in the oaks
the small knots, like bark rolled up in a dot, will be acorns. Purple
vetches along the mounds, yellow lotus where the grass is shorter, and
orchis succeeds to orchis. As I write them, so these things come--not
set in gradation, but like the broadcast flowers in the mowing-grass.
Now follows the gorse, and the pink rest-harrow, and the sweet
lady's-bedstraw, set as it were in the midst of a little thorn-bush. The
broad repetition of the yellow clover is not to be written; acre upon acre,

and not one spot of green, as if all the green had been planed away,
leaving only the flowers to which the bees come by the thousand from
far and near. But one white campion stands in the midst of the lake of
yellow. The field is scented as though a hundred hives of honey had
been emptied on it. Along the mound by it the bluebells are seeding,
the hedge has been cut and the ground is strewn with twigs. Among
those seeding bluebells and dry twigs and mosses I think a titlark has
his nest, as he stays all day there and in the oak over. The pale clear
yellow of charlock, sharp and clear, promises the finches bushels of
seed for their young. Under the scarlet of the poppies the larks run, and
then for change of colour soar into the blue. Creamy honeysuckle on
the hedge around the cornfield, buds of wild rose everywhere, but no
sweet petal yet. Yonder, where the wheat can climb no higher up the
slope, are the purple heath-bells, thyme and flitting stonechats.
The lone barn shut off by acres of barley is noisy with sparrows. It is
their city, and there is a nest in every crevice, almost under every tile.
Sometimes the partridges run between the ricks, and when the bats
come out of the roof, leverets play in the waggon-track. At even a
fern-owl beats by, passing close to the eaves whence the moths issue.
On the narrow waggon-track which descends along a coombe and is
worn in chalk, the heat pours down by day as if an invisible lens in the
atmosphere focussed the sun's rays. Strong woody knapweed endures it,
so does toadflax and pale blue scabious, and wild mignonette. The very
sun of Spain burns and burns and ripens the wheat on the edge of the
coombe, and will only let the spring moisten a yard or two around it;
but there a few rushes have sprung, and in the water itself brooklime
with blue flowers grows so thickly that nothing but a bird could find
space to drink. So down again from this