Striking The Side Of The Dark Pines, The
Wind Changes Their Colour And Turns Them Paler.
The oak leaves slide one
over the other, hand above hand, laying shadow upon shadow upon the white
road.
In the vast net of the wide elm-tops the drifting shadow of the
cloud which the wind brings is caught for a moment. Pushing aside the
stiff ranks of the wheat with both arms, the air reaches the sun-parched
earth. It walks among the mowing-grass like a farmer feeling the crop
with his hand one side, and opening it with his walking-stick the other.
It rolls the wavelets carelessly as marbles to the shore; the red cattle
redden the pool and stand in their own colour. The green caterpillar
swings as he spins his thread and lengthens his cable to the tide of air,
descending from the tree; before he can slip it the whitethroat takes
him. With a thrust the wind hurls the swift fifty miles faster on his
way; it ruffles back the black velvet of the mole peeping forth from his
burrow. Apple bloom and crab-apple bloom have been blown long since
athwart the furrows over the orchard wall; May petals and June roses
scattered; the pollen and the seeds of the meadow-grasses thrown on the
threshing-floor of earth in basketfuls. Thistle down and dandelion down,
the brown down of the goat's-beard; by-and-by the keys of the sycamores
twirling aslant - the wind carries them all on its back, gossamer web and
great heron's vanes - the same weight to the wind; the drops of the
waterfall blown aside sprinkle the bright green ferns.
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