when the white mist is packed like snow over the vale and the high woods take the level beams and a hundred globes of dew glitter on every thread of the spiders’ hammocks or loose perpendicular nets among the thorns, and through the mist rings the anvil a mile away with a music as merry as that of the daws that soar and dive between the beeches and the spun white cloud; mornings full of the sweetness of mushrooms and blackberries from the short turf among the blue scabious bloom and the gorgeous brier; empurpled evenings before frost when the robin sings passionate and shrill and from the garden earth float the smells of a hundred roots with messages of the dark world; and hours full of the thrush’s soft November music. The end should come in heavy and lasting rain. At all times I love rain, the early momentous thunderdrops, the perpendicular cataract shining, or at night the little showers, the spongy mists, the tempestuous mountain rain. I like to see it possessing the whole earth at evening, smothering civilization, taking away from me myself everything except the power to walk under the dark trees and to enjoy as humbly as the hissing grass, while some twinkling house-light or song sung by a lonely man gives a foil to the immense dark force. I like to see the rain making the streets, the railway station, a pure desert, whether bright with lamps or not. It foams all the roofs and trees and bubbles into the water-butts. It gives the grey rivers a demonic majesty. It scours the roads, sets the flints moving, and exposes the glossy chalk in the tracks through the woods. It does work that will last as long as the earth. It is about eternal business. In its noise and myriad aspect I feel the mortal beauty of immortal things. And then after many days the rain ceases at midnight with the wind, and in the silence of dawn and frost the last rose of the world is dropping her petals down to the glistering whiteness, and there they rest blood-red on the winter’s desolate coast. INDEX Angelico, Fra, 253 April, 31, 155 _Arabian Nights_, 63, 222 Ashdown, 8, 47, 48 August, 51, 181, 186, 210, 262 Bain, F. W., 222 Ballads, 224, 240 Belloc, Hilaire, 1 Beowulf, 158 Berkshire, 255 Blake, 35, 133 Books, 26, 109, 130, 131, 178 Borrow, 77, 117 Bradley, A. G., 11 _Brocken, Henry_, 178 Browne, Thomas, 86 Byron, 111 Canal, Wilts. and Berks., 3 Cathedrals, 4 Catullus, 109 _Centuries of Meditation_, 126 Chaucer, 109, 110, 125 Colman’s Hatch, 60 Conrad, Joseph, 130 Cornwall, 154, 249 Cows, 129, 204, 252 Crouch’s Croft, 47 Crowborough, 47 Cuckoo, 41 Doughty, Charles M., 147, 153 Downs, 1, 2, 8, 10, 28, 31, 35, 38, 40, 48, 50, 53, 71, 87, 101, 104, 152, 169, 183, 205, 210, 227, 237, 255, 258 Drayton, Michael, 109 Fair, A South Country, 266 February, 17 Game, 59, 68 Genée, Mademoiselle, 179 Gerald of Wales, 150 Golden Age, 125