Pages from a Journal with Other Papers eBook

It is a bright day in March, with a gentle south-west wind.  Sitting still in the copse and facing the sun it strikes warm.  It has already mounted many degrees on its way to its summer height, and is regaining its power.  The clouds are soft, rounded, and spring-like, and the white of the blackthorn is discernible here and there amidst the underwood.  The brooks are running full from winter rains but are not overflowing.  All over the wood which fills up the valley lies a thin, purplish mist, harmonising with the purple bloom on the stems and branches.  The buds are ready to burst, there is a sense of movement, of waking after sleep; the tremendous upward rush of life is almost felt.  But how silent the process is!  There is no hurry for achievement, although so much has to be done—­such infinite intricacy to be unfolded and made perfect.  The little stream winding down the bottom turns and doubles on itself; a dead leaf falls into it, is arrested by a twig, and lies there content.

JUNE

It is a quiet, warm day in June.  The wind is westerly, but there is only just enough of it to waft now and then a sound from the far-off town, or the dull, subdued thunder of cannon-firing from ships or forts distant some forty miles or more.  Massive, white-bordered clouds, grey underneath, sail overhead; there was heavy rain last night, and they are lifting and breaking a little.  Softly and slowly they go, and one of them, darker than the rest, has descended in a mist of rain, blotting out the ships.  The surface of the water is paved curiously in green and violet, and where the light lies on it scintillates like millions of stars.  The grass is not yet cut, and the showers have brought it up knee-deep.  Its gentle whisper is plainly heard, the most delicate of all the voices in the world, and the meadow bends into billows, grey, silvery, and green, when a breeze of sufficient strength sweeps across it.  The larks are so multitudinous that no distinct song can be caught, and amidst the confused melody comes the note of the thrush and the blackbird.  A constant under-running accompaniment is just audible in the hum of innumerable insects and the sharp buzz of flies darting past the ear.  Only those who live in the open air and watch the fields and sea from hour to hour and day to day know what they are and what they mean.  The chance visitor, or he who looks now and then, never understands them.  While I have lain here, the clouds have risen, have become more aerial, and more suffused with light; the horizon has become better defined, and the yellow shingle beach is visible to its extremest point clasping the bay in its arms.  The bay itself is the tenderest blue-green, and on the rolling plain which borders it lies intense sunlight chequered with moving shadows which wander eastwards.  The wind has shifted a trifle, and comes straight up the Channel from the illimitable ocean.