Thomas Alfred Coward

“ Nature, there, has reasserted herself and reconstructed marvellous beauty. There is nothing sordid or unsightly in those tern and heather clad granite rocks, even if some show the tool-marks and drill-holes. Let them look at the noble old church, with all its evidences of the art of man, and then at the rugged, tree-grown, ivy-clothed sandstone quarry in the wood. Nature very quickly heals the wounds and regains her own. ”

“ The turtle-dove purrs in the birch, the woodpigeon coos in the beech; nightly the owl leaves his ivy-bower to hunt round the old quarry, whilst the bats dodge in and out amongst the branches. In the close summer days the hollow hums with insect life; millions of whirring wings produce a low but steady booming note, and in the evening the trees and bushes are haunted by the silently flying, ghostly moths. Nature has reclaimed her own.
Man must have stone and brick and coal; he can no longer exist in natural holes or beneath the uncertain shade of the trees. ”

“ Nature stepped in when man stepped out, and with an ordered disorder began to heal. The pine-needles dropped from the firs above, the browning wind-drifted beech leaves found refuge in the bottom from the blast, the winged sycamore seeds whirled through the air, the elderberries rolled down the slope. ”