Page:The Heart of England.djvu/164

 progress was not very real to our minds. Only when we saw a great fire at an inn, a red face or two, a copper vessel thrust in among the coals to warm the ale, did there appear to be much being done to fight winter and to subjugate this primitive world. We saw the birds around us for what they were—little, tender, hungry things, entirely sorrowful, easily killed, and not mere melodious attendants upon our delight.

A train crawling along the valley at a distance was very feeble in our eyes. The strength and purpose were concerted. It was like a thought which is without the implements for action—pathetic and impotent, it was absorbed easily by the vast white land. It shrieked and was lost in a tunnel.

There were only two real things—the cold and the thought of man. The cold expressed itself easily by the whiteness and the leaden shade, the great power of distance, the obliteration of colours, footpaths, landmarks, the silence. Thought was not equally vigorous. It could not sustain itself alone. Men had to walk hard, to talk and even then to change the subjects rapidly, especially if they were abstract. Thus to compare the ham of Wiltshire with that of South Wales was pleasant and easy for a time; but to discuss the nature of love or style or virtue was not long possible.

Under the ice of a pond lay the last summer's nest of a grebe among the rotten reeds. High and low in the hedges, old nests were as the jetsam of summer's wreck—as if a galleon should be represented by a boot on the shore.

Through the land went a dusky river, and in it a black