In
The Level Meadow From Among The Tall Grasses And White-Flowering Wild
Parsley A Landrail Called 'crake, Crake,' Ceaselessly.
There was a sense
of rest and quiet, and with it a joyousness of bird-life, such as should
be about an English homestead.
AN ENGLISH DEER-PARK.
There is an old park wall which follows the highway in all its turns with
such fidelity of curve that for some two miles it seems as if the road
had been fitted to the wall. Against it hawthorn bushes have grown up at
intervals, and in the course of years their trunks have become almost
timber. Ivy has risen round some of these, and, connecting them with the
wall, gives them at a distance the appearance of green bastions. Large
stems of ivy, too, have flattened themselves upon the wall, as if with
arched back they were striving like athletes to overthrow it. Mosses,
brown in summer, soft green in winter, cover it where there is shadow,
and if pulled up take with them some of the substance of the stone or
mortar like a crust, A dry, dusty fern may perhaps be found now and then
on the low bank at the foot - a fern that would rather be within the park
than thus open to the heated south with the wall reflecting the sunshine
behind. On the other side of the road, over the thin hedge, there is a
broad plain of corn-fields. Coming from these the labourers have found
out, or made, notches in the wall; so that, by putting the iron-plated
toes of their boots in, and holding to the ivy, they can scale it and
shorten their long trudge home to the village.
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