Once more with patient skill we lure
     The mighty salmon from the deep;
     Once more we tread the boundless moor,
     And wander up the mountain steep.

     With gun in hand we scour the plain,
     Together climb the rocky ways;
     Regardless he of wind and rain
     Who loved to “live laborious days.”

* * * * *

     I see again fair Penllergare,
     Those woods and lakes you loved so well;
     It seems but yesterday that there
     I parted from you!  Who can tell

     The reason thou art gone before? 
     It is not given to us to know,
     But doubtless thou wert needed more
     Than we who mourn thee here below.

     Life’s noblest lesson day by day
     Thy fair example nobly taught—­
     Self-sacrifice—­to point the way
     By which the hearts of men are brought

     Nearer to God.  This was thy task,
     Humbly, unknowingly fulfilled;
     And it were vain for us to ask
     Why now thy voice is hushed and stilled.

     O gallant spirit, generous heart! 
     If thou had’st lived in days gone by,
     Thou would’st have loved to bear thy part
     In glorious deeds of chivalry.

I make no apology for this digression, nor for unearthing from the bottom of my drawer lines that, written years ago, were never penned with any idea of publication.  For was not the subject of those verses himself half a Cotswold man?

But now to return once more to the trees, the loss of which caused me to digress some pages back; there are compensations in all things.  Not every one who becomes a sojourner among the Cotswold Hills is fated to undergo such a trial as the loss of these ninety elms.  And, notwithstanding this severe lesson, I am still glad that I alighted on the spot from which I am now writing.

I have learnt to find pleasure in other directions now that my “Eton playing-fields” have passed away for ever.  I have become infected by the spirit of the downs.  I love the pure, bracing air and the boundless sense of space in the open hills as much as I ever loved the more concentrated charms of the valley.  And even in the valley I have possessions of which no living man is able to deprive me.  From my window I can see the silvery trout stream, which, after thousands of years of restless activity, is still slowly gliding down towards the sea; I can listen on summer nights to the murmuring waterfall at the bottom of the garden, the hooting of the owls, and the other sounds which break the awful silence of the night.

Nor can the hand of man disturb the glorious timber round the house; for it is “ornamental,” and therefore safe from the hands of the despoiler.  Storms are gradually levelling the ancient beech and ash trees in the woods, but it will be many a long day before the hand of nature has marred the beauty of what has always seemed to me to be one of the fairest spots on earth.