A wild bee hummed among the nettles, content and self-sufficient; a crow slanted overhead, veering as he saw me, for crows and gamekeepers hate each other equally; a dead leaf fluttered into the water and was carried in a foam-capped whirlpool under the roots of the hawthorn. Three willow-wrens came to the tree, and sought the insects that walked over the broad platform of the leaves; one flew to the surface of the brook and seized a horse-fly struggling in the water. The stream sang and sang, carrying the leaf that had left the tree for ever; the sunlight flashed a burnished ripple, was gone again, and the bees brushed against the nettles, wondering if they should stay there or gather their harvest from the bluebells, lit by the shuffling shadow mazes, whose honey lay ready for loading. All the morning the bells on the green towers of stalk had been pealing their chimes of fragrance to the bees; the busy harvesters went heavily past, drawing their song-inspiration from the infinite flame of the sun, passing from bell to bell with an eagerness that must cause the wild hyacinths to rejoice--for would they not shortly vanish like the celandines and the wind-flowers? Nothing remains for long. A brief life, and they have gone whither all things that draw upon the earth-energy must go. Though the blackbird sing so leisurely, the flowers stand gently timorous in their fragility, the veined leaf stain itself with the sunbeams, and I am exalted in the “light and fire of summer,” yet for all there is only so little of time. Therefore, it seemed to me, by the brimming water, so pitiable that millions were confined in factory and office, breathing the air fouled by exhaust of petrol engine and chimney, while the brook rippled so sweetly, and the living air formed a passionate stream with the energy of the sunbeams.