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. In the spring the larks,
passing from the green corn to the pasture within, fluttering over with
gently vibrating wings and singing as they daintily go, sometimes settle
on the top. There too the yellow-hammers stay. In the crevices blue tits
build deep inside passages that abruptly turn, and baffle egg-stealers.
Partridges come over with a whir, but just clearing the top, gliding on
extended wings, which to the eye look like a slight brown crescent. The
waggoners who go by know that the great hawthorn bastions are favourite
resorts of wood-pigeons and missel-thrushes. The haws are ripe in autumn
and the ivy berries in spring, so that the bastions yield a double crop.
A mallow, the mauve petals of which even the dust of the road cannot
impair, flowers here and there on the dry bank below, and broad
moon-daisies among the ripe and almost sapless grass of midsummer.
If any one climbed the wall from the park and looked across at the plain
of corn-fields in early spring, everywhere there would be seen brown dots
in the air - above the first slender green blades; above the freshly
turned dark furrows; above the distant plough, the share of which,
polished like a silver mirror by friction with the clods, reflects the
sunshine, flashing a heliograph message of plenty from the earth;
everywhere brown dots, and each a breathing creature - larks ceaselessly
singing, and all unable to set forth their joy. Swift as is the vibration
of their throats, they cannot pour the notes fast enough to express their
eager welcome. As a shower falls from the sky, so falls the song of the
larks. There is no end to them: they are everywhere; over every acre away
across the plain to the downs, and up on the highest hill. Every crust of
English bread has been sung over at its birth in the green blade by a
lark.
If one looked again in June, the clover itself, a treasure of beauty and
sweetness, would be out, and the south wind would come over acres of
flower - acres of clover, beans, tares, purple trifolium, far-away crimson
sainfoin (brightest of all on the hills), scarlet poppies, pink
convolvulus, yellow charlock, and green wheat coming into ear. In August,
already squares would be cut into the wheat, and the sheaves rising,
bound about the middle, hour-glass fashion; some breadths of wheat
yellow, some golden-bronze; besides these, white barley and oats, and
beans blackening. Turtle-doves would be in the stubble, for they love to
be near the sheaves. The hills after or during rain look green and near;
on sunny days, a far and faint blue. Sometimes the sunset is caught in
the haze on them and lingers, like a purple veil about the ridges. In the
dusk hares come heedlessly along; the elder-bushes gleam white with
creamy petals through the night.
Sparrows and partridges alike dust themselves in the white dust, an inch
deep, of midsummer, in the road between the wall and the corn - a pitiless
Sahara road to traverse at noonday in July, when the air is still and you
walk in a hollow way, the yellow wheat on one side and the wall on the
other. There is shade in the park within, but a furnace of sunlight
without - weariness to the eyes and feet from glare and dust. The wall
winds with the highway and cannot be escaped. It goes up the slight
elevations and down the slopes; it has become settled down and bound with
time. But presently there is a steeper dip, and at the bottom, in a
narrow valley, a streamlet flows out from the wheat into the park. A
spring rises at the foot of the down a mile away, and the channel it has
formed winds across the plain. It is narrow and shallow; nothing but a
larger furrow, filled in winter by the rains rushing off the fields, and
in summer a rill scarce half an inch deep. The wheat hides the channel
completely, and as the wind blows, the tall ears bend over it. At the
edge of the bank pink convolvulus twines round the stalks and the
green-flowered buckwheat gathers several together. The sunlight cannot
reach the stream, which runs in shadow, deep down below the wheat-ears,
over which butterflies wander. Forget-me-nots flower under the banks;
grasses lean on the surface; willow-herbs, tall and stiff, stand up; but
out from the tangled and interlaced fibres the water flows as clear as it
rose by the hill. There is a culvert under the road, and on the opposite
side the wall admits the stream by an arch jealously guarded by bars. In
this valley the wall is lower and thicker and less covered at the top
with ivy, so that where the road rises over the culvert you can see into
the park. The stream goes rounding away through the sward, bending
somewhat to the right, where the ground gradually descends. On the left
side, at some distance, stands a row of full-grown limes, and through
these there is a glimpse of the old manor-house.
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