The Original Scene From Which He Took His Picture Of
- The Plough - Is Not Far Distant.
The painter is gone; the grasses and the
flowers are renewed with the summer.
As I stood by the brook a water-rat
came swimming, drawing a large dock-leaf in his mouth; seeing me, he
dived, and took the leaf with him under water.
Everywhere wild strawberries were flowering on the banks - wild
strawberries have been found ripe in January here; everywhere ferns were
thickening and extending, foxgloves opening their bells. Another deep
coombe led me into the mountainous Quantocks, far below the heather, deep
beside another trickling stream. In this land the sound of running water
is perpetual, the red flat stones are resonant, and the speed of the
stream draws forth music like quick fingers on the keys; the sound of
running water and the pleading voice of the willow-wren are always heard
in summer. Among the oaks growing on the steep hill-side the willow-wrens
repeated their sweet prayer; the water as it ran now rose and now fell;
there was a louder note as a little stone was carried over a fall. The
shadow came slowly out from the oak-grown side of the coombe, it reached
to the margin of the brook. Under the oaks there appears nothing but red
stones, as if the trees were rooted in them; under the boughs probably
the grass does not cover the rock as it does on the opposite side. There
mountain-ashes flowered in loose order on the green slope. Redstarts
perched on them, darting out to seize passing insects. Still deeper in
the coombe the oaks stood on either side of the stream; it was the
beginning of woods which reach for miles, in which occasionally the wild
red deer wander, and drink at the clear waters. By now the shadow of the
western hill-top had crossed the brooklet, and the still coombe became
yet more silent. There was an alder, ivy-grown, beside the stream - a tree
with those lines which take an artist's fancy. Under the roots of alders
the water-ousel often creeps by day, and the tall heron stalks past at
night. Receding up the eastern slope of the coombe the sunlight left the
dark alder's foliage in the deep shadow of the hollow. I went up the
slope till I could see the sun, and waited; in a few minutes the shadow
reached me, and it was sunset; I went still higher, and presently the sun
set again. A cool wind was drawing up the coombe, it was dusky in the
recesses of the oaks, and the water of the stream had become dark when we
emerged from the great hollow, and yet without the summer's evening had
but just commenced, and the banks were still heated by the sun.
In contrast to the hills and moors which are so open and wild, the broad
vales beneath are closely shut in with hedges.
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