Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/196

182 hill, which has become such a household and home-meaning word, the starting-point of my walks in the Green Border-Land of The Black Country: so, having challenged the poet Capern to accompany me, we set off on one of the brightest and cheeriest days of an English autumn. Even The Black Country through which we passed looked its very best, though the smoke was all the dunner for lack of cloud or murky mist. Little patches of struggling verdure, dashed with sooty stubble, caught some of the life and glow of the sunlight between the shadows of the towering chimneys. Wolverhampton is the border-town of the district. On its western outskirt the scene changes with surprising and sudden contrast. In a few minutes you are in the Green Border-Land. All is quiet, rural, and peaceful. Everything looks and feels as if it had a safe and permanent foundation. All the houses stand level and strong. You see none tipped over end-ways with one leg sunk to the knee. The cows and sheep feed or ruminate as if they felt at home, and would find all their pasture above-board on the morrow. The trees in hedge-row, copse, and grove seem to thank heaven out of the whispering lips of all their leaves that they can breathe its pure air and drink in the life of its blessed sun, with no black, despotic chimneys to molest or make them afraid. We were as much surprised as