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.
THE COUNTRY SUNDAY.
Roses bloomed on every bush, and some of the great hawthorns up which the
briars had climbed seemed all flowers. The white and pink-white petals of
the June roses adhered all over them, almost as if they had been
artificially gummed or papered on so as to hide the leaves. Such a
profusion of wild-rose bloom is rarely seen. On the Sunday morning, as on
a week-day morning, they were entirely unnoticed, and might be said in
their turn to take no heed of the sanctified character of the day. With a
rush like a sudden thought the white-barred eave-swallows came down the
arid road and rose again into the air as easily as a man dives into the
water. Dark specks beneath the white summer clouds, the swifts, the black
albatross of our skies, moved on their unwearied wings. Like the
albatross that floats over the ocean and sleeps on the wing, the swift's
scimitar-like pinions are careless of repose. Once now and then they came
down to earth, not, as might be supposed, to the mansion or the church
tower, but to the low tiled roof of an ancient cottage which they fancied
for their home. Kings sometimes affect to mix with their subjects; these
birds that aspire to the extreme height of the air frequently nest in the
roof of a despised tenement, inhabited by an old woman who never sees
them. The corn was green and tall, the hops looked well, the foxglove was
stirring, the delicious atmosphere of summer, sun-laden and scented,
filled the deep valleys; a morning of the richest beauty and deepest
repose. All things reposed but man, and man is so busy with his vulgar
aims that it quite dawns upon many people as a wonderful surprise how
still nature is on a Sunday morning. Nature is absolutely still every day
of the week, and proceeds with the most absolute indifference to days and
dates.
The sharp metallic clangour of a bell went bang, bang, bang, from one
roof; not far distant a harsher and deeper note - some Tartar-like bell of
universal uproar - hammered away.
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