AUGUST.

You can still have the sunlight on the road along the two
miles to the village after tea.

As you make your way along the lane shadowless eyes peep
at you from the near bank, whose grassy pelt shines so freshly
green that it seems as though you must find upon its breast the
faces of spring blossoms. But full-grown ferns are there, and if
you look closely you will find here and there the folded twist
of waiting violet petals. The tiny beads of late strawberries
share your gaze with forget-me-nots and wild pansies, and meadow-
sweet shakes out its feathery farewell as you brush by. The
roses that shone from the crest of the hedge are a memory, and
there will be no new honeysuckle; but the downy green of the
hedge nuts is pink-flushed only here and there, the stately discs
of hemlock are as yet unchanged and honey-full, the nodding blue
heads of scabious show no sign of their mauvy old age, and only
one in a thousand blackberries is ripe.

This morning, going through the woods up the long green
alley, starred with the tiny golden blossoms of July, you saw
the oaks standing knee-deep in forests of bracken, the giant
fronds shining across the woodland floor under the streaming sun-
light one unbroken plaque of bluish grey, shadow-flecked. Not a
single frond, even of those that have been since May spreading
and spreading, is tipped with gold. The clearest transparent
green they were as you lay hidden, moss-cushioned, under their

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high roofage for midday shelter.

Shut away in the cool green stillness it was for a moment
as if the woodlands, towering unseen above you, were once more
welcoming and intimate as they had been in June, when you could,
once the arresting marvel of Spring vanished into full leafage,
step at any moment from the dusty highway into a tender silence;
but this morning when you were still the ceaseless sound of a
million tiny hummings made you an interloper, told you you might,
if you pleased, walk through the busy forest, but only by treading
out a pathway of death. You must wait for your woods. Even the
gentle wind of summer may not pass through now. The clustering
summits of the trees billow and roar like a sea keeping it out,
and it passes voiceless on into the open. . . . The excuse of a
sudden gateway silver-grey bridging a gap in the afternoon hedge
brings you to a standstill and shows you a group of little red
calves in an even background of pure green. The sun stands away
in the sky behind you a clear span from the horizon, and shines
upon the chequer of meadows stretching away from your gate, making
the emerald of the further hedgerows foam unshadowed along the
edge of the shadowless sward; the poplars, their boles green-
panelled to the rim of the hedge-green, sprout up their clear-
toned brushes against the narrowing lines of the further fields.

A soft blue edge of distance fills every break in the
horizon, and curves full up into the sky here and there, showing
as softly, shadowlessly clear as your meadows, giving you the

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far-off tiny face of an oatfield gleaming cream-warm with soft
black hedgerows, a little square of the tawny gold of waiting
corn, a long strip heaped with barley sheaves and a field of
vetch, a lacquer of blue-green black-framed against the tender
sky. ...

It has rained all day. Great cloud masses push heavily across
the sky, and along the edge of the dark wood the rain-wraiths
stalk, high as the trees. Within all is still. No living thing
is to be seen. The squelch of your boot-soles echoes through the
dim aisles.

The rising wind whips the tree-tops. They snarl and hiss.
It sways and separates them till strange lightnings fall across
you in the gloom.

There will be no wheeling bats to-night round your hut at
the edge of the forest, nor drifting chafers. The trees will
roar hour after hour, wave after wave, from either side of the
valley, and at last with the storm at its height the mighty wings
of the wind will cleave, tearing a passage, through the swaying
forest, and above all the tumult of the trees you will hear clear
once more from the depths of the night his long-drawn call.