Page:The Life of the Fields, Jefferies, 1884.djvu/109

Rh out into the wooded country. Yellow wallflowers grew along the high wall, and flowered against the sky; swallows flew to and fro the warm space sheltered from the wind, beneath them. In the lane a blackbird was so occupied among the arums at the roots of the trees that he did not stir till actually obliged. Blackbirds and thrushes are fond of searching about where the arums grow thickest. In the park a clump of tall aspens gleamed like silk in the sunshine. The calls of moorhens came up from a lake in a deep valley near, beeches grow down the steep slope to the edge of the water, and the wind which rippled it drew in a strong draught up the hill. From that height the glance saw to the bottom of the clear water, to which the waves and the wind gave a translucent green. The valley winds northward, curving like a brook, and in the trough a narrow green band of dark grass follows the windings, a pathlike ribbon as deeply coloured as a fairy ring, and showing between the slopes of pale turf On this side are copses of beech, and on that of fir; the fir copses are encircled by a loose hedge of box, fading and yellowish, while the larch tops were filled with sweet and tender green. Like the masts and yards of a ship, which are gradually hidden as the sails are set, so these green sails unfurling concealed the tall masts and taper branches of the fir. Afar the great hills were bare, wind-swept and dry. The glass-green river wound along the plain, and the sea bloomed blue under the sun, blue by the distant shore, darkening like a level cloud where a dim ship marked the horizon. A blue sky requires greensward and green woods—the sward