Richard Jefferies

“ In a meadow not far from the house here is a shallow but clear streamlet, running down a deep broad ditch overshadowed by tall hemlock and clogweed, arched over with willow, whose leaves when the wind blows and their under-side is exposed give the hedge a grey tint, with maple and briar. Hide yourself here on a summer morning among the dry grass and bushes, and presently the blackbird comes to stand a minute on a stone which checks the tiny stream like a miniature rock, and then to splash the clear water overhead and back with immense energy. ”

“ On a warm June day, when the hedges are covered with roses and the air is sweet with the odour of mown grass, it is pleasant to listen to the blackbirds in the oaks pouring forth their rich liquid notes. There is no note so sweet and deep and melodious as that of the blackbird to be heard in our fields; it is even richer than the nightingale’s, though not so varied. Just before noonday—between eleven and twelve—when the heat increases, he leaves the low thick bushes and moist ditches and mounts up into an oak tree, where, on a branch, he sits and sings. ”

“ He then flies just above the grass, only high enough to escape touching it, and follows the contour of the field. At the hedges he has to rise, and immediately meets the full force of the breeze. It is so powerful sometimes that he cannot overcome it, and his efforts simply lift him in the air, like a kite drawn against the wind. For a few moments he appears stationary, his own impetus and the contending wind balancing each other, and holding him suspended. Then he rises again, but still finding the current too strong, tacks like a ship to port or starboard, and so works aslant into the gale. ”

“ Upon the right, close by, is the ash copse, with its border of thick fir trees; on the left oaks at intervals stand along the hedge; in front stretches the undulating surface of an immense pasture field called The Warren. Like a prairie it rolls gently away, dotted with hawthorn bushes, here and there a crab tree, and two rows of noble elms, in both of which the rooks are busy in spring. Beyond, the ground rises, and the small upland meadows are so thickly timbered as to look like distant glades of a forest; still farther are the downs. ”

“ The odour of the bean-flower lingering on the air in the early summer is delicious; in autumn when cut the stalk and pods are nearly black, so that the shocks on the side of the hills show at a great distance. The sward, where the slope of the down becomes almost level beside the hedge, is short and sweet and thickly strewn with tiny flowers, to which and to the clover the bees come, settling, as it were, on the ground, so that as you walk you nearly step on them, and they rise from under the foot with a shrill, angry buzz. ”

“ It is but a stone’s-throw across—a level mead walled in with tail trees, whose leaves in myriads lie on the brown-tinted grass. One great thicket only grows in the midst of it. The nights are chilly here, as elsewhere; but in the day, the winds being kept off by the trees and underwood, it becomes quite summer-like, and the leaves turn to their most brilliant hues. The stems of the bracken are yellow; the fronds vary from pale green and gold, commingled, to a reddish bronze. The hawthorn leaves are light yellow, some touched with red, others almost black. Maple bushes glow with gold. ”

“ The inner slope of the green fosse is inclined at an angle pleasant to recline on, with the head just below the edge, in the summer sunshine. A faint sound as of a sea heard in a dream—a sibilant ‘sish, sish,’—passes along outside, dying away and coming again as a fresh wave of the wind rushes through the bennets and the dry grass. There is the happy hum of bees—who love the hills—as they speed by laden with their golden harvest, a drowsy warmth, and the delicious odour of wild thyme. ”

“ If on a summer’s morning you go and sit in the gateway about half-way up the hedge, partly hidden by a pollard ash and great hawthorn bushes, you will not have long to wait before you hear the pleasant calls of the greenfinches coming. They seem always to travel two or more pairs together, and constantly utter a soothing call, as if to say to their companions, “Here we are, close by, dearest.” They all appear to know exactly where they are going—flitting across the gateway one by one, moving of one accord in the same direction ”

“ Noble workmanship in wood may be found, too, in some of the ancient barns; sometimes the beams are of black oak, in others of chestnut.
In these modern days men have lost the pleasures of the orchard; yet an old-fashioned orchard is the most delicious of places wherein to idle away the afternoon of a hazy autumn day, when the sun seems to shine with a soft slumberous warmth without glare, as if the rays came through an aerial spider’s web spun across the sky, letting all the beauty, but not the heat, slip through its invisible meshes. ”

“ Viewed from a spot three or four fields away, the copse in the evening seems to be overhung by a long dark cloud like a bar of mist, while the sky is clear and no dew has yet risen. The resemblance to a cloud is so perfect that anyone—not thinking of such things—may for the time be deceived, and wonder why a cloud should descend and rest over that particular spot. Suddenly, the two ends of the extended black bar contract and the middle swoops down in the shape of an inverted cone, much resembling a waterspout, and in a few seconds the cloud pours itself into the trees. ”

“ You may see it in every motion: in the lissom bound of the hare, the playful leap of the rabbit, the song that the lark and the finch must sing; the soft, loving coo of the dove in the hawthorn; the blackbird ruffling out his feathers on a rail. The sense of living—the consciousness of seeing and feeling—is manifestly intense in them all, and is in itself an exquisite pleasure. Their appetites seem ever fresh: they rush to the banquet spread by Mother Earth with a gusto that Lucullus never knew in the midst of his artistic gluttony ”

“ A succession of detached hawthorn bushes—like a hedge with great gaps—grow in a line up the rising ground. The dying vines of the bryony trail over them—one is showing its pale greenish white flowers, while the rest bear heavy bunches of berries. A last convolvulus, too, has a single pink-streaked bell, though the bough to which it holds is already partly bare of leaves. The touch of autumn is capricious, and passes over many trees to fix on one which stands out glowing with colour, while on the rest a dull green lingers. Near the summit a few bunches of the brake fern rise out of the grass ”

“ The bill is of a fine colour—almost the ‘orange-tawny’ of the blackbird, set in thick red coral at its base. Under the shallow water at the mouth of the pond the marks of their feet on the mud may be traced: they run swiftly, and depend upon that speed and the skilful tricks they practise in diving—turning back and dodging under water like a hare in the fields—to escape from pursuit, rather than on their wings. Through the thick green flags they creep, and into the holes the water-rats have made, or behind and under the natural cavities in the stoles upon the bank. ”

“ After a while the faint breeze increases, but changes in character; it blows steadily, and the ‘sish sish’ of the bennets as it rushes through them becomes incessant. A sense of oppression weighs on the chest—in the midst of the wind, on the verge of the hill, you sigh for a breath of air. This is not air: it is simply heat in motion. It is like the simoom of the desert—producing a feeling of intense weariness. Previously the distant ridges of the downs were shaded by a dim haze hovering over them, toning the rolling curves and softening the bolder bluffs. ”

“ On outspread wings the swallow floats above, then slants downwards with a rapid swoop, and with the impetus of the motion rises easily. Therefore it is that this skull here, lying so light in the palm of the hand, with the bright sunshine falling on it, and a shadowy darkness in the vacant orbits of the eyes, fills us with sadness. ‘As leaves on leaves, so men on men decay;’ how much more so with these creatures whose generations are so short.
If we look closely into the grass here on the slope of the fosse it is animated by a busy throng of insects rushing in hot haste to and fro. ”

“ There is a slight tapping sound—it seems quite near, but it is really some little way off; and presently a woodpecker crosses the open, flying with a wave-like motion, now dipping and now rising. Soon afterwards a second passes: there are numbers of them scattered about the forest. A clattering noise comes from the trees on the left—it is a wood-pigeon changing his perch; he has settled again, for now his hollow note is heard, and he always calls while perching. A loud screeching and chattering deeper in the forest tells that the restless jays are there. ”

“ As a student remembers for years the type and paper, the breadth of the margin—can see, as it were, before his eyes the bevel of the binding and hear again the rustle of the stiff leaves of some tall volume which he found in a forgotten corner of a library, and bent over with such delight, heedless of dust and ‘silver-fish’ and the gathered odour of years—so the shepherd recalls his books, the fields; for he, in the nature of things, has to linger over them and study every letter: sheep are slow. ”

“ In the early spring, when the night is bright and clear, it is a place to stand a moment and muse awhile. For the copse is dark and gloomy, the bare oaks are dark behind; the eye cannot see across the prairie, whose breadth is doubled by the night. But yonder lies a great grey sarsen boulder, like an uncouth beast of ancient days crouching in the hollow. Hush! there was a slight rustling in the grass there, as of a frightened thing; it was a startled hare hastening away. The brightest constellations of our latitude pour down their rays and influence on the birth of bud and leaf in spring ”

“ So, too, if the rooks quit the rookery or the colonies of bees in the hives on the sunny side of the orchard decay and do not swarm, but seem to die off, it is an evil omen. If at night a bird flutters against the window-pane in the darkness—as they will sometimes in a great storm of wind, driven, perhaps, from their roosting-places by the breaking of the boughs, and attracted by a light within—the knocking of their wings betokens that something sad is about to happen. ”

“ How many a man’s life has centred about the waggon! As a child he rides in it as a treat to the hay-field with his father; as a lad he walks beside the leader, and gets his first ideas of the great world when they visit the market town. As a man he takes command and pilots the ship for many a long, long year. When he marries, the waggon, lent for his own use, brings home his furniture. ”