The path through the higher wood was covered with leaves, and bordered by bleached stalks of wild parsley and crumbling sorrel spires. From the tall grasses the sap went with summer, and like frail ghosts they drooped over the pathway. The sun was warm, as though it were celandine-time. Upright and pallid under the trees, and lit by the warm sunshine, the stalks of the year’s bluebells bore their skull-like caps filled with their black shining seeds. Even as the wind stirred the branches of the trees the old loved shadow lacings slipped and shuffled on the ground. The wind sounded as in summer, the loveliest goldy-brown brimmed the hollows under the oaks. The phantoms of summer were with me as I leant against a sapling, the cast feather of a chaffinch swung on a spider’s line encircling the trunk waved a gentle farewell. Where the shafts of sunlight lingered among the brambles their leaves were fired a lucent green; autumn is kind to the bramble, touching a leaf here and there only with blood red splash. I waited under the oak, unable to leave the warmth and tranquillity. A cloud hid the sun. I wanted to see the beauteous light come again through the rifted clouds, to see the staining of the bramble leaves. Once more the sun gilded the bare branches, colouring the red berries of the holly that would feed the thrushes in winter, and lacquering the beech trees till they seemed like the tawny beards of vikings. Somewhere in the wood was the ghost of Proserpine returned to see how her children were faring--under the leaves were the seeds that would bring forth bloom and beauty and fragrance in the spring; deep in the earth lay the cocoons and shells whence would arise the happy throng of summery moths and butterflies. For this is the purpose of autumn: rest and quietude for those who have laboured throughout the summer to ensure life for their kind. So now in autumn my hope is as firm as the oak. Every leaf that falls is pushed from its hold by a bud awaiting the mystic order to unfold itself in spring; every flower lives but to form its seeds. All through the centuries the spirits of the flowers and the wild things have been growing more beautiful in the knowledge of their service. As I walked away a timid song sounded on the air. Somewhere a robin was singing. He was not made miserable by thought--he was happy every moment. He did not need to brood upon immortality--he lived unconscious of time--every moment was _lived_, the beauty of the earth and the sun, and his mate, all accepted without question. The robin lives like an immortal here, upon the earth that is so beautiful: and all the wisdom of the dead civilisations is nothing to what the robin’s song tells, if you will but listen. SWALLOW BROW: _A Fantasy_ (_To P. T._)