One Leaf Falls In The Stillness Of The Air Slowly, As
If Let Down By A Cord Of Gossamer Gently, And Not As A Stone Falls - Fate
Delayed To The Last.
A moth adheres to a bough, his wings half open, like
a short brown cloak flung over his shoulders.
Pointed leaves, some
drooping, some horizontal, some fluttering slightly, still stay on the
tall willow wands, like bannerets on the knights' lances, much torn in
the late battle of the winds. There is a shower from a clear sky under
the trees in the forest; brown acorns rattling as they fall, and rich
coloured Spanish chestnuts thumping the sward, and sometimes striking you
as you pass under; they lie on the ground in pocketfuls. Specks of
brilliant scarlet dot the grass like some bright berries blown from the
bushes; but on stooping to pick them, they are found to be the heads of a
fungus. Near by lies a black magpie's feather, spotted with round dots of
white.
At the edge of the trees stands an old timbered farmstead, whose gables
and dark lines of wood have not been painted in the memory of man, dull
and weather-beaten, but very homely; and by it rises the delicate cone of
a new oast-house, the tiles on which are of the brightest red. Lines of
bluish smoke ascend from among the bracken of the wild open ground, where
a tribe of gipsies have pitched their camp. Three of the vans are
time-stained and travel-worn, with dull red roofs; the fourth is brightly
picked out with fresh yellow paint, and stands a marked object at the
side.
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