The Right Dandelion For This
Question Is The One That Comes About May With A Very Broad Disc, And In
Such Quantities As Often To Cover A Whole Meadow.
I used to admire them
very much in the fields by Surbiton (strong clay soil), and also on the
Towing-path of the Thames where the sward is very broad, opposite Long
Ditton; indeed, I have often walked up that towing-path on a beautiful
sunny morning, when all was quiet except the nightingales in the Palace
hedge, on purpose to admire them. I dare say they are all gone now for
evermore; still, it is a pleasure to look back on anything beautiful.
What colour is this dandelion? It is not yellow, nor orange, nor gold;
put a sovereign on it and see the difference. They say the gipsies call
it the Queen's great hairy dog-flower - a number of words to one stalk;
and so, to get a colour to it, you may call it the yellow-gold-orange
plant. In the winter, on the black mud under a dark, dripping tree, I
found a piece of orange peel, lately dropped - a bright red orange speck
in the middle of the blackness. It looked very beautiful, and instantly
recalled to my mind the great dandelion discs in the sunshine of summer.
Yet certainly they are not red-orange. Perhaps, if ten people answered
this question, they would each give different answers. Again, a bright
day or a cloudy, the presence of a slight haze, or the juxtaposition of
other colours, alters it very much; for the dandelion is not a glazed
colour, like the buttercup, but sensitive. It is like a sponge, and adds
to its own hue that which is passing, sucking it up.
The shadows of the trees in the wood, why are they blue? Ought they not
to be dark? Is it really blue, or an illusion? And what is their colour
when you see the shadow of a tall trunk aslant in the air like a leaning
pillar? The fallen brown leaves wet with dew have a different brown from
those that are dry, and the upper surface of the green growing leaf is
different from the under surface. The yellow butterfly, if you meet one
in October, has so toned down his spring yellow that you might fancy him
a pale green leaf floating along the road. There is a shining, quivering,
gleaming; there is a changing, fluttering, shifting; there is a mixing,
weaving - varnished wings, translucent wings, wings with dots and veins,
all playing over the purple heath; a very tangle of many-toned lights and
hues. Then come the apples: if you look upon them from an upper window,
so as to glance along the level plane of the fruit, delicate streaks of
scarlet, like those that lie parallel to the eastern horizon before
sunrise; golden tints under bronze, and apple-green, and some that the
wasps have hollowed, more glowingly beautiful than the rest; sober leaves
and black and white swallows:
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