W. H. Hudson

“ Such a profound darkness and quiet one expects in an inland agricultural village; here, where there were visitors from many distant towns, it was novel and infinitely refreshing.
No sooner was it dark than all were in bed and asleep; not one square path of yellow light was visible. To enjoy the sensation I went out and sat down, and listened alone to the liquid rippling, warbling sound of the swift-flowing streamlet—that sweet low music of running water to which the reed-warbler had listened thousands of years ago, striving to imitate it, until his running rippling song was perfect. ”

“ Here I saw a pretty thing: a cock cirl-bunting, his yellow breast towards me, sitting quietly on a large bush of these same brilliant berries, set amidst a mass of splendidly coloured hazel leaves, mixed with bramble and tangled with ivy and silver-grey traveller's-joy. An artist's heart would have leaped with joy at the sight, but all his skill and oriental colours would have made nothing of it, for all visible nature was part of the picture, the wide wooded earth and the blue sky beyond and above the bird, and the sunshine that glorified all. ”

“ The foraging crow continually turns his head, gull-like and harrier-like, from side to side, as if to search the ground thoroughly or to concentrate his vision on some vaguely seen object.
Not only the crow was there: a magpie chattered as I came from the brake, but refused to show himself; and a little later a jay screamed at me, as only a jay can. There are times when I am intensely in sympathy with the feeling expressed in this ear-splitting sound, inarticulate but human. ”

“ But the rain is over now, the sky once more a pure lucid blue above me—all around me, in fact, since I am standing high on the top of the ancient stupendous earthwork, grown over with oak wood and underwood of holly and thorn and hazel with tangle of ivy and bramble and briar. It is marvellously still; no sound from the village reaches me; I only hear the faint rustle of the dead leaves as they fall, and the robin, for one spied me here and has come to keep me company. At intervals he spurts out his brilliant little fountain of sound ”

“ To be near the spot I went to stay at Shrewton, a downland village four miles from "The Stones"; or rather a group of five pretty little villages, almost touching but distinct, like five flowers or five berries on a single stem, each with its own old church and individual or parish life. It is a pretty tree-shaded place, full of the crooning sound of turtle-doves, hidden among the wide silent open downs and watered by a clear swift stream, or winter bourne, which dries up during the heats of late summer, and flows again after the autumn rains, "when the springs rise" in the chalk hills. ”

“ As I came away Shepton Mallet was shaken to its foundations by a tremendous and most diabolical sound, a prolonged lupine yell or yowl, as if a stupendous wolf, as big, say, as the Anglo-Bavarian brewery, had howled his loudest and longest. This infernal row, which makes Shepton seem like a town or village gone raving mad, was merely to inform the men, and, incidentally, the universe, that it was time for them to knock off work. ”

“ If he is on a green level country with blue hills on the horizon, then, especially in the early morning, is the call sweetest, most irresistible. Come away—come away: this blue world has better things than any in that green, too familiar place. The startling scream of the jay—you have heard it a thousand times. It is pretty to watch the squirrel in his chestnut-red coat among the oaks in their fresh green foliage, full of fun as a bright child, eating his apple like a child, only it is an oak-apple, shining white or white and rosy-red, in his little paws ”

“ The middle bird had the shining crimson eyes; but in a few moments the illusory colour was gone and the eyes were black.
It was certainly an extraordinary thing: the ragged-looking black-plumaged bird on its ragged nest of sticks in the deep shade, with one ray of intense sunlight on its huge nose-like beak and blood-red eyes, a sight to be remembered for a lifetime! It recalled Zurbaran's picture of the "Kneeling Monk," in which the man with everything about him is steeped in the deepest gloom except his nose, on which one ray of strong light has fallen. ”

“ At noon, in the brilliant sunshine, as I came loiteringly down the long slope from Doles Wood to the village, he overtook me. He was a huge man, over six feet high, nobly built, suggesting a Scandinavian origin, with a broad blond face, good features, and prominent blue eyes, and his hair was curly and shone like gold in the sunlight. Had he been a mere labourer in a workman's rough clay-stained clothes, one would have stood still to look at and admire him, and say perhaps what a magnificent warrior he would have looked with sword and spear and plumed helmet, mounted on a big horse! ”

“ And all because of the illusion that we shall see them as they were—that Time has stood still waiting for our return, and by and by, to our surprise and grief, we discover that it is not so; that the dear friends of other days, long unvisited but unforgotten, have become strangers. This human loss is felt even more in the case of a return to some small centre, a village or hamlet where we knew every one, and our intimacy with the people has produced the sense of being one in blood with them. It is greatest of all when we return to a childhood's or boyhood's home. ”

“ At all events, there they were, remembered again, looking at me from the past, blue eyes that were beautiful and dear to me, whose blue colour was associated with every sweetness and charm in child and woman and with all that is best and highest in human souls; and I could not and had no wish to resist their appeal.
Then came a new experience of the eye that is blue—a meeting with one who almost seemed to be less flesh than spirit. A middle-aged lady, frail, very frail; exceedingly pale from long ill-health, prematurely white-haired, with beautiful grey eyes, gentle but wonderfully bright. ”

“ The sitting bird, the frolicking rabbit, the basking adder—they are as little disturbed at my presence as the butterfly that drops down close to my feet to sun his wings on a leaf or frond and makes me hold my breath at the sight of his divine colour, as if he had just fluttered down from some brighter realm in the sky. Think of a dog in this world, intoxicated with the odours of so many wild creatures, dashing and splashing through bogs and bushes! It is ten times worse than a bull in a china-shop. ”

“ Abbotsbury is an old unspoilt village, not on but near the sea, divided from it by half a mile of meadowland where all sorts of meadow and water plants flourish, and where there are extensive reed and osier beds, the roosting-place in autumn and winter of innumerable starlings. I am always delighted to come on one of these places where starlings congregate, to watch them coming in at day's decline and listen to their marvellous hubbub, and finally to see their aerial evolutions when they rise and break up in great bodies and play at clouds in the sky. ”

“ When the mackerel visit the coast, and come near enough to be taken in a draw-net, every villager who owns a share (usually a tenth) in a fishing-boat throws down his spade or whatever implement he happens to have in his hand at the moment, and hurries away to the beach to take his share in the fascinating task. At four o'clock one morning a youth, who had been down to the sea to watch, came running into the village uttering loud cries which were like excited yells—a sound to rouse the deepest sleeper. ”

“ The very soil and wet carpet of moss on which their feet were set, the standing trees and leaves, green or yellow, the rain-drops, the air they breathed, the sunshine in their eyes and hearts, was part of them, not a garment, but of their very substance and spirit. Feeling this, death becomes an illusion; and the illusion that the continuous life of the species (its immortality) and the individual life are one and the same is the reality and truth. An illusion, but, as Mill says, deprive us of our illusions and life would be intolerable. ”

“ Yet even there, where, standing on some elevation, cows beyond one's power to number could be seen scattered far and wide in the green vales beneath, it had saddened me to find them so silent. It is not natural for them to be dumb; they have great emotions and mighty voices—the cattle on a thousand hills. Their morning and evening lowing is more to me than any other natural sound—the melody of birds, the springs and dying gales of the pines, the wash of waves on the long shingled beach. ”

“ For she would seem a woman and would be like some women we have known, beautiful with blue flower-like eyes, pale gold or honey-coloured hair; very white of skin, Leightonian, almost diaphanous, so delicate as to make all other skins appear coarse and made of clay. And with her beauty and a mysterious sweetness not of the heart, since no heart there would be in that mist-cold body, she would draw all hearts, ever inspiring, but never satisfying passion, her beauty and alluring smiles being but the brightness of a cloud on which the sun is shining. ”

“ A robust man of thirty-eight or forty, with blue eyes and a Saxon face, he looked a thorough Englishman, and yet he struck me as most un-English in his lively, almost eager manner, his freedom with a stranger, and something, too, in his speech. From time to time his face lighted up, when, looking to the window, his eyes rested on some pretty scene—a glimpse of stately old elm trees in a field where cattle were grazing, of the vivid green valley of a chalk stream, the paler hills beyond, the grey church tower or spire of some tree-hidden village. ”

“ For it is a fact that mere size is very much to us, in spite of all the teachings of science. We have heard of Stonehenge in our childhood or boyhood—that great building of unknown origin and antiquity, its circles of stones, some still standing, others lying prostrate, like the stupendous half-shattered skeleton of a giant or monster whose stature reached to the clouds. It stands, we read or were told, on Salisbury Plain. To my uninformed, childish mind a plain anywhere was like the plain on which I was born—an absolutely level area stretching away on all sides into infinitude ”

“ Death is a reality only when it is very near, so close on us that we can actually hear its swift stoaty feet rustling over the dead leaves, and for a brief bitter space we actually know that his sharp teeth will presently be in our throat.
Out in the blessed sunshine I listen to a blackcap warbling very beautifully in a thorn bush near the cottage; then to the great shout of excited joy of the children just released from school, as they rush pell-mell forth and scatter about the village, and it strikes me that the bird in the thorn is not more blithe-hearted than they. ”

“ Exeter itself did not impress me so strongly, in spite of its cathedral. The village of Exford printed itself thus sharply on my mind because I had there been filled with wonder and delight at the sight of a face exceeding in loveliness all the faces seen in that West Country—a rarest human gem, which had the power of imparting to its setting something of its own wonderful lustre. The type was a common Somerset one, but with marked differences in some respects, else it could not have been so perfect. ”

“ These two complementary colours, red and green, delight us most when seen thus—a little red to a good deal of green, and the more luminous the red and vivid the green the better they please us. We see this in flowers—in the red geranium, for example—where there is no brown soil below, but green of turf or herbage. I sometimes think the red campions and ragged-robins are our most beautiful wild flowers when the sun shines level on the meadow and they are like crimson flowers among the tall translucent grasses. ”