The Voice Of The
Cuckoo In His Season Travels On The Zephyr, And The Note Comes To The
Most Distant Hill, And Deep Into The Deepest Wood.
The light and fire of summer are made beautiful by the air, without whose
breath the glorious summer were all spoiled.
Thick are the hawthorn
leaves, many deep on the spray; and beneath them there is a twisted and
intertangled winding in and out of boughs, such as no curious ironwork of
ancient artist could equal; through the leaves and metal-work of boughs
the soft west wind wanders at its ease. Wild wasp and tutored bee sing
sideways on their course as the breeze fills their vanes; with broad
coloured sails boomed out, the butterfly drifts alee. Beside a brown
coated stone in the shadowed stream a brown trout watches for the puffs
that slay the May-flies. Their ephemeral wings were made for a more
exquisite life; they endure but one sun; they bear not the touch of the
water; they die like a dream dropping into the river. To the amethyst in
the deep ditch the wind comes; no petal so hidden under green it cannot
find; to the blue hill-flower up by the sky; it lifts the guilty head of
the passionate poppy that has sinned in the sun for love. Sweet is the
rain the wind brings to the wallflower browned in the heat, a-dry on the
crumbling stone. Pleasant the sunbeams to the marigold when the wind has
carried the rain away and his sun-disc glows on the bank. Acres of
perfume come on the wind from the black and white of the bean-field; the
firs fill the air by the copse with perfume. I know nothing to which the
wind has not some happy use. Is there a grain of dust so small the wind
shall not find it out? Ground in the mill-wheel of the centuries, the
iron of the distant mountain floats like gossamer, and is drunk up as dew
by leaf and living lung. A thousand miles of cloud go by from morn till
night, passing overhead without a sound; the immense packs, a mile
square, succeed to each other, side by side, laid parallel, book-shape,
coming up from the horizon and widening as they approach. From morn till
night the silent footfalls of the ponderous vapours travel overhead, no
sound, no creaking of the wheels and rattling of the chains; it is calm
at the earth, but the wind labours without an effort above, with such
case, with such power. Grey smoke hangs on the hill-side where the
couch-heaps are piled, a cumulus of smoke; the wind comes, and it draws
its length along like the genii from the earthen pot; there leaps up a
great red flame shaking its head; it shines in the bright sunlight; you
can see it across the valley.
A perfect summer day with a strong south wind; a cloudless blue sky blown
pale, a summer sun blown cool, deep draughts of refreshing air to man and
horse, clear definition of red-tile roof and conical oast, perfect colour
of soft ash-green trees. In the evening, fourteen black swifts rushing
together through the upper atmosphere with shrill cries, sometimes aside
and on the tip of one wing, with a whirl descending, a black trail, to
the tiled ridge they dwell in. Fine weather after this.
A swooning August day, with a hot east wind, from which there is no
escape, which gives no air to the chest - you breathe and are not
satisfied with the inspiration; it does not fill; there is no life in the
killed atmosphere. It is a vacuum of heat, and yet the strong hot wind
bends the trees, and the tall firs wrestle with it as they did with
Sinis, the Pine-bender, bowed down and rebounding as if they would whirl
their cones away like a catapult. Masses of air are moving by, and yet
there is none to breathe. No escape in the shadow of hedge or wood, or in
the darkened room; darkness excludes the heat that comes with light, but
the heat of the oven-wind cannot be shut out. Some monstrous dragon of
the Chinese sky pants his fiery breath upon us, and the brown grass
stalks threaten to catch flame in the field. The grain of wheat that was
full of juice dries hard in the ears, and water is no more good for
thirst. There is not a cloud in the sky; but at night there is heavy
rain, and the flowers are beaten down. There is a thunder-wind that blows
at intervals when great clouds are visibly gathering over the hayfield.
It is almost a calm; but from time to time a breath comes, and a low
mournful cry sounds in the hollow farmhouse - the windows and doors are
open, and the men and women have gone out to make hasty help in the hay
ere the storm - a mournful cry in the hollow house, as unhappy a note as
if it were soaked February.
In April, six miles away in the valley, a vast cloud came down with
swan-shot of hail, black as blackest smoke, overwhelming house and wood,
all gone and mixed with the sky; and behind the mass there followed a
white cloud, sunlit, dragging along the ground like a cumulus fallen to
the earth. At sunset the sky cleared, and under the glowing rim of the
sun a golden wind drove the host of vapour before it, scattering it to
the right and left. Large pieces caught and tore themselves in the trees
of the forest, and one curved fragment hurled from the ridge fell in the
narrow coombe, lit up as it came down with golden sunset rays, standing
out bright against the shadowed wood. Down it came slowly as it were with
outstretched arms, both to fall, carrying the coloured light of the sky
to the very surface of the earth.
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