Colour Comes Up In The Wind; The Thin
Mist Disappears, Drunk Up In The Grass And Trees, And The Air Is Full Of
Blue Behind The Vapour.
Blue sky at the far horizon - rich deep blue
overhead - a dark-brown blue deep yonder in the gorge among the trees.
I
feel a sense of blue colour as I face the strong breeze; the vibration
and blow of its force answer to that hue, the sound of the swinging
branches and the rush - rush in the grass is azure in its note; it is
wind-blue, not the night-blue, or heaven-blue, a colour of air. To see
the colour of air it needs great space like this - a vastness of concavity
and hollow - an equal caldron of valley and plain under, to the dome of
the sky over, for no vessel of earth and sky is too large for the
air-colour to fill. Thirty, forty, and more miles of eye-sweep, and
beyond that the limitless expanse over the sea - the thought of the eye
knows no butt, shooting on with stellar penetration into the unknown. In
a small space there seems a vacuum, and nothing between you and the hedge
opposite, or even across the valley; in a great space the void is filled,
and the wind touches the sight like a thing tangible. The air becomes
itself a cloud, and is coloured - recognised as a thing suspended;
something real exists between you and the horizon. Now full of sun, and
now of shade, the air-cloud rests in the expanse.
It is summer, and the wind-birds top the furze; the bright stonechat,
velvet-black and red and white, sits on the highest spray of the gorse,
as if he were painted there. He is always in the wind on the hill, from
the hail of April to August's dry glow. All the mile-long slope of the
hill under me is purple-clad with heath down to the tree-filled gorge
where the green boughs seem to join the purple. The corn-fields and the
pastures of the plain - count them one by one till the hedges and squares
close together and cannot be separated. The surface of the earth melts
away as if the eyes insensibly shut and grew dreamy in gazing, as the
soft clouds melt and lose their outline at the horizon. But dwelling
there, the glance slowly finds and fills out something that interposes
its existence between us and the further space. Too shadowy for the
substance of a cloud, too delicate for outline against the sky, fainter
than haze, something of which the eye has consciousness, but cannot put
into a word to itself. Something is there. It is the air-cloud adhering
like a summer garment to the great downs by the sea. I cannot see the
substance of the hills nor their exact curve along the sky; all I can see
is the air that has thickened and taken to itself form about them. The
atmosphere has collected as the shadow collects in the distant corner of
a room - it is the shadow of the summer wind. At times it is so soft, so
little more than the air at hand, that I almost fancy I can look through
the solid boundary. There is no cloud so faint; the great hills are but a
thought at the horizon; I - think - them there rather than see them; if I
were not thinking of them, I should scarce know there was even a haze,
with so dainty a hand does the atmosphere throw its covering over the
massy downs. Riding or passing quickly perhaps you would not observe
them; but stay among the heathbells, and the sketch appears in the south.
Up from the sea over the corn-fields, through the green boughs of the
forest, along the slope, comes a breath of wind, of honey-sweetened air,
made more delicate by the fanning of a thousand wings.
The labour of the wind: the cymbals of the aspen clashing, from the
lowest to the highest bough, each leaf twirling first forwards and then
backwards and swinging to and fro, a double motion. Each lifts a little
and falls back like a pendulum, twisting on itself; and as it rises and
sinks, strikes its fellow-leaf. Striking the side of the dark pines, the
wind changes their colour and turns them paler. The oak leaves slide one
over the other, hand above hand, laying shadow upon shadow upon the white
road. In the vast net of the wide elm-tops the drifting shadow of the
cloud which the wind brings is caught for a moment. Pushing aside the
stiff ranks of the wheat with both arms, the air reaches the sun-parched
earth. It walks among the mowing-grass like a farmer feeling the crop
with his hand one side, and opening it with his walking-stick the other.
It rolls the wavelets carelessly as marbles to the shore; the red cattle
redden the pool and stand in their own colour. The green caterpillar
swings as he spins his thread and lengthens his cable to the tide of air,
descending from the tree; before he can slip it the whitethroat takes
him. With a thrust the wind hurls the swift fifty miles faster on his
way; it ruffles back the black velvet of the mole peeping forth from his
burrow. Apple bloom and crab-apple bloom have been blown long since
athwart the furrows over the orchard wall; May petals and June roses
scattered; the pollen and the seeds of the meadow-grasses thrown on the
threshing-floor of earth in basketfuls. Thistle down and dandelion down,
the brown down of the goat's-beard; by-and-by the keys of the sycamores
twirling aslant - the wind carries them all on its back, gossamer web and
great heron's vanes - the same weight to the wind; the drops of the
waterfall blown aside sprinkle the bright green ferns.
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