Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Jefferies, Richard, 1848-1887
"All the procession of living and growing things passes. The grass
stands up taller and still taller, the sheaths open, and the stalk
arises, the pollen clings till the breeze sweeps it. The bees rush
past, and the resolute wasps; the humble-bees, whose weight swings
them along. About the oaks and maples the brown chafers swarm, and
the fern-owls at dusk, and the blackbirds and jays by day, cannot
reduce their legions while they last. Yellow butterflies, and
white, broad red admirals, and sweet blues; think of the kingdom of
flowers which is theirs! Heavy moths burring at the edge of the
copse; green, and red, and gold flies: gnats, like smoke, around
the tree-tops; midges so thick over the brook, as if you could haul
a netful; tiny leaping creatures in the grass; bronze beetles
across the path; blue dragonflies pondering on cool leaves of
water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from
elm to elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot
blundering up into the branches; missel thrushes leading their
fledglings, already strong on the wing, from field to field. An egg
here on the sward dropped by a starling; a red ladybird creeping,
tortoise-like, up a green fern frond. Finches undulating through
the air, shooting themselves with closed wings, and linnets happy
with their young....
"Straight go the white petals to the heart; straight the mind's
glance goes back to how many other pageants of summer in old times!
When perchance the sunny days were even more sunny; when the stilly
oaks were full of mystery, lurking like the Druid's mistletoe in
the midst of their mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came
back to it again from every flower; as the sunshine was reflected
from them, so the feeling in the heart returned tenfold. To the
dreamy summer haze love gave a deep enchantment, the colours were
fairer, the blue more lovely in the lucid sky. Each leaf finer, and
the gross earth enamelled beneath the feet. A sweet breath on the
air, a soft warm hand in the touch of the sunshine, a glance in the
gleam of the rippled waters, a whisper in the dance of the shadows.
The ethereal haze lifted the heavy oaks and they were buoyant on
the mead, the rugged bark was chastened and no longer rough, each
slender flower beneath them again refined. There was a presence
everywhere though unseen, on the open hills, and not shut out under
the dark pines. Dear were the June roses then because for another
gathered. Yet even dearer now with so many years as it were upon
the petals; all the days that have been before, all the
heart-throbs, all our hopes lie in this opened bud. Let not the
eyes grow dim, look not back but forward; the soul must uphold
itself like the sun. Let us labour to make the heart grow larger as
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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