Page:The Heart of England.djvu/42

 and waves and hills know us as the creatures who make the ship, the chariot and the plough. These three things, as they go about their work, must have become universal symbols, so that when a man comes in sight, the other inhabitants of the earth say: Here is he who sails in ships and drives the chariot and guides the plough. And the greatest of all is the plough. It is without pride and also without vanity. The ship and the chariot have sometimes tried to conceal their ancient simplicity, though they have never done without it. But the plough is the same—in shape like a running hound, with tail uplifted and muzzle bowed to the scent.

Richard the ploughman is worthy of his plough and team. He moves heavily with long strides over the baked yellow field, swaying with the violent motion of the plough as it cuts the stubborn and knotty soil, and yet seeming to sway out of joy and not necessity. He is a straight, small-featured, thin-lipped man, red-haired and with blue eyes of a fierce loneliness almost fanatical. Hour after hour he crosses and recrosses the field, up to the ridge, whence he can see miles of hill and wood; down to the woodside where the rabbits hardly trouble to hide as he appears, or to the thick hedge with marigolds below and nearly all day the song of nightingales. The furrow is always straight; he could plough it so asleep, and sometimes perhaps he does. The larks sing invisible in the white May sky. The swallows and woodlarks and willow wrens and linnets, with their tenderest of all mortal voices, flit and sing about him. Partridges whirr and twang. A fox steals along the hedge, a squirrel glows and ripples across a bay of the field. And for a little time he notices these