The Old Pensioner Came To The Door For His Bread And Cheese:
'The Wind's In The South' He Said, 'and I Hopes She'll Stay There' Five
Dull Yellow Spots On The Hedge - Gorse Bloom - That Had Remained Unchanged
For So Many Weeks, Took A Fresh Colour And Became Golden.
By the constant
passing of the waggons and carts along the road that had been so silent
it was evident that the busy time of spring was here.
There would be
rough weather, doubtless, now and again, but it would not again be
winter.
Dark patches of cloud - spots of ink on the sky, the 'messengers' - go
drifting by; and after them will follow the water-carriers, harnessed to
the south and west winds, drilling the long rows of rain like seed into
the earth. After a time there will be a rainbow. Through the bars of my
prison I can see the catkins thick and sallow-grey on the willows across
the field, visible even at that distance; so great the change in a few
days, the hand of spring grows firm and takes a strong grasp of the
hedges. My prison bars are but a sixteenth of an inch thick; I could snap
them with a fillip - only the window-pane, to me as impenetrable as the
twenty-foot wall of the Tower of London. A cart has just gone past
bearing a strange load among the carts of spring; they are talking of
poling the hops. In it there sat an old man, with the fixed stare, the
animal-like eye, of extreme age; he is over ninety.
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