The Pageant of Summer

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THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER


BY
RICHARD JEFFERIES

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1914




I.


Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch,
told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the
hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like
summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they
were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate
scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different from that of grass or
leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in
the middle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap and
freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had
drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness of the
air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes--the common rushes--were
full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of early grasses growing on
the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthorn boughs were shaken
by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in among the grass, and leaves
and grass-blades touched. Smooth round stems of angelica, big as a gun-
barrel, hollow and strong, stood on the slope of the mound, their tiers
of well-balanced branches rising like those of a tree. Such a sturdy
growth pushed back the ranks of hedge parsley in full white flower, which
blocked every avenue and winding bird's-path of the bank. But the "gix,"
or wild parsnip, reached already high above both, and would rear its
fluted stalk, joint on joint, till it could face a man. Trees they were
to the lesser birds, not even bending if perched on; but though so stout,
the birds did not place their nests on or against them. Something in the
odour of these umbelliferous plants, perhaps, is not quite liked; if
brushed or bruised they give out a bitter greenish scent. Under their
cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against or on the
stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain supports.
With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in the ditch
itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge was wrapped
and thickened. No cunning of glance could see through it; it would have
needed a ladder to help any one look over.

It was between the may and the June roses. The may bloom had fallen, and
among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed
the red-wings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed, straight and
towering while there was a thorn or an ash sapling, or a yellow-green
willow, to uphold them, and then curving over towards the meadow. The
buds were on them, but not yet open; it was between the may and the rose.

As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible
portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so
the air lingering among the wood and hedges--green waves and
billows--became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched
hawthorn leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, narrow ash sprays and oval
willows; from vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under; brushed
from the waving grasses and stiffening corn, the dust of the sunshine was
borne along and breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of
bees and birds, the stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It
was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the
earth went up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of
the Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the summer--to
the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature in the grass, up to
the highest swallow. Winter shows us Matter in its dead form, like the
Primary rocks, like granite and basalt--clear but cold and frozen
crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising from the
earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the
solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves. Living things
leap in the grass, living things drift upon the air, living things are
coming forth to breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the
immense weight of Matter--the dead, the crystallized--press ponderously
on the thinking mind. The whole office of Matter is to feed life--to
feed the green rushes, and the roses that are about to be; to feed the
swallows above, and us that wander beneath them. So much greater is this
green and common rush than all the Alps.

Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just visible as he passes;
did he pause, the light would be apparent through their texture. On the
wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is
a prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more delicate than the
minute filaments on a swallow's quill, more delicate than the pollen of a
flower. They are formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is
resolved into the means and organs of life! Though not often consciously
recognized, perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to watch the
earth, the dead particles, resolving themselves into the living case of
life, to see the seed-leaf push aside the clod and become by degrees the
perfumed flower. From the tiny mottled egg come the wings that by-and-by
shall pass the immense sea. It is in this marvellous transformation of
clods and cold matter into living things that the joy and the hope of
summer reside. Every blade of grass, each leaf, each separate floret and
petal, is an inscription speaking of hope. Consider the grasses and the
oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue butterfly--they are one and all a sign
and token showing before our eyes earth made into life. So that my hope
becomes as broad as the horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on
every bough, reflected in the gleam of every flower. There is so much
for us yet to come, so much to be gathered, and enjoyed. Not for you or
me, now, but for our race, who will ultimately use this magical secret
for their happiness. Earth holds secrets enough to give them the life of
the fabled Immortals. My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief
that ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure
sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall
take from all their beauty and enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a
flower is to me so much more than stalk and petals. When I look in the
glass I see that every line in my face means pessimism; but in spite of
my face--that is my experience--I remain an optimist. Time with an
unsteady hand has etched thin crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows,
has cast the original expression into shadow. Pain and sorrow flow over
us with little ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on the beach. Let us not
look at ourselves but onwards, and take strength from the leaf and the
signs of the field. He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to
the ideal life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright of mind.

The long grass flowing towards the hedge has reared in a wave against it.
Along the hedge it is higher and greener, and rustles into the very
bushes. There is a mark only now where the footpath was; it passed close
to the hedge, but its place is traceable only as a groove in the sorrel
and seed-tops. Though it has quite filled the path, the grass there
cannot send its tops so high; it has left a winding crease. By the hedge
here stands a moss-grown willow, and its slender branches extend over the
sward. Beyond it is an oak, just apart from the bushes; then the ground
gently rises, and an ancient pollard ash, hollow and black inside, guards
an open gateway like a low tower. The different tone of green shows that
the hedge is there of nut-trees; but one great hawthorn spreads out in a
semicircle, roofing the grass which is yet more verdant in the still pool
(as it were) under it. Next a corner, more oaks, and a chestnut in
bloom. Returning to this spot an old apple tree stands right out in the
meadow like an island. There seemed just now the tiniest twinkle of
movement by the rushes, but it was lost among the hedge parsley. Among
the grey leaves of the willow there is another flit of motion; and
visible now against the sky there is a little brown bird, not to be
distinguished at the moment from the many other little brown birds that
are known to be about. He got up into the willow from the hedge parsley
somehow, without being seen to climb or fly. Suddenly he crosses to the
tops of the hawthorn and immediately flings himself up into the air a
yard or two, his wings and ruffled crest making a ragged outline; jerk,
jerk, jerk, as if it were with the utmost difficulty he could keep even
at that height. He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and all at once
sinks like a stone into the hedge and out of sight as a stone into a
pond. It is a whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and nettles.
Presently he will go out to the island apple tree and back again in a
minute or two; the pair of them are so fond of each other's affectionate
company, they cannot remain apart.

Watching the line of the hedge, about every two minutes, either near at
hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the grass, hovers a
second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover.
Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now
and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart.
They are flyfishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips and
grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water. A blackbird slips
up into the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut tree.
But these are not visible together, only one at a time and with
intervals. The larger part of the life of the hedge is out of sight. All
the thrush-fledglings, the young blackbirds, and finches are hidden, most
of them on the mound among the ivy, and parsley, and rough grasses,
protected, too, by a roof of brambles. The nests that still have eggs
are not, like the nests of the early days of April, easily found; they
are deep down in the tangled herbage by the shore of the ditch, or far
inside the thorny thickets which then looked mere bushes, and are now so
broad. Landrails are running in the grass concealed as a man would be in
a wood; they have nests and eggs on the ground for which you may search
in vain till the mowers come.

Up in the corner a fragment of white fur and marks of scratching show
where a doe has been preparing for a litter. Some well-trodden runs lead
from mound to mound; they are sandy near the hedge where the particles
have been carried out adhering to the rabbits' feet and fur. A crow
rises lazily from the upper end of the field, and perches in the
chestnut. His presence, too, was unsuspected. He is there by far too
frequently. At this season the crows are always in the mowing-grass,
searching about, stalking in winding tracks from furrow to furrow,
picking up an egg here and a foolish fledgling that has wandered from the
mound yonder. Very likely there may be a moorhen or two slipping about
under cover of the long grass; thus hidden, they can leave the shelter of
the flags and wander a distance from the brook. So that beneath the
surface of the grass and under the screen of the leaves there are ten
times more birds than are seen.

Besides the singing and calling, there is a peculiar sound which is only
heard in summer. Waiting quietly to discover what birds are about, I
become aware of a sound in the very air. It is not the midsummer hum
which will soon be heard over the heated hay in the valley and over the
cooler hills alike. It is not enough to be called a hum, and does but
just tremble at the extreme edge of hearing. If the branches wave and
rustle they overbear it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder, it
overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot define it,
except by calling the hours of winter to mind--they are silent; you hear
a branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the hoar
frost crunch on the grass beneath your feet, but the air is without sound
in itself. The sound of summer is everywhere--in the passing breeze, in
the hedge, in the broad-branching trees, in the grass as it swings; all
the myriad particles that together make the summer are in motion. The
sap moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass and flower,
and yet again these acres and acres of leaves and square miles of grass
blades--for they would cover acres and square miles if reckoned edge to
edge--are drawing their strength from the atmosphere. Exceedingly minute
as these vibrations must be, their numbers perhaps may give them a volume
almost reaching in the aggregate to the power of the ear. Besides the
quivering leaf, the swinging grass, the fluttering bird's wing, and the
thousand oval membranes which innumerable insects whirl about, a faint
resonance seems to come from the very earth itself. The fervour of the
sunbeams descending in a tidal flood rings on the strung harp of earth.
It is this exquisite undertone, heard and yet unheard, which brings the
mind into sweet accordance with the wonderful instrument of nature.

By the apple tree there is a low bank, where the grass is less tall and
admits the heat direct to the ground; here there are blue flowers--bluer
than the wings of my favourite butterflies--with white centres--the
lovely bird's-eyes, or veronica. The violet and cowslip, bluebell and
rose, are known to thousands; the veronica is overlooked. The ploughboys
know it, and the wayside children, the mower and those who linger in
fields, but few else. Brightly blue and surrounded by greenest grass,
imbedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the grass, these
growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves the sun. From this island
I look down into the depth of the grasses. Red sorrel spires--deep
drinkers of reddest sun wine--stand the boldest, and in their numbers
threaten the buttercups. To these in the distance they give the gipsy-
gold tint--the reflection of fire on plates of the precious metal. It
will show even on a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say.
Gather the open marguerite daisies, and they seem large--so wide a disc,
such fingers of rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much
green. Clover heads of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden
footpath. Like clubs from Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied
in shape: some tend to a point--the foxtails--some are hard and
cylindrical; others, avoiding the club shape, put forth the slenderest
branches with fruit of seed at the ends, which tremble as the air goes
by. Their stalks are ripening and becoming of the colour of hay while
yet the long blades remain green.

Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails are succeeded by
foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow blades, but never become
monotonous; sorrel stands by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed of
veronica at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of flowers,
and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows oak and elm ranks with
elm, but the woodlands are pleasant; however many times reduplicated,
their beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days; the sun rises on
the same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue sky, but did we
ever have enough of them? No, not in a hundred years! There seems
always a depth, somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that has not been seen
through, a corner full of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which may give
us something. Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they pass on
for the most part bound on a long journey, across to the clover fields or
up to the thyme lands; only a few go down into the mowing-grass. The
hive bees are the most impatient of insects; they cannot bear to entangle
their wings beating against grasses or boughs. Not one will enter a
hedge. They like an open and level surface, places cropped by sheep, the
sward by the roadside, fields of clover, where the flower is not deep
under grass.




II.


It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the mowing-
grass. If entangled, the humble-bee climbs up a sorrel stem and takes
wing, without any sign of annoyance. His broad back with tawny bar
buoyantly glides over the golden buttercups. He hums to himself as he
goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cunning work in glass
receives his labour, no artificial saccharine aids him when the beams of
the sun are cold, there is no step to his house that he may alight in
comfort; the way is not made clear for him that he may start straight for
the flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if the storm
descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and
tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron
nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn but
no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall
(in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape
the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering
nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out
and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far
inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest
is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound, a mere tunnel
beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn overhangs it, the
fern grows by, red mice rustle past.

It thunders, and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the
treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the
lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of
a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree
fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the
wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a
fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them out into the
fields; but the humble-bee's home, under moss and matted fibres, remains
uninjured. His house at the root of the king of trees, like a cave in
the rock, is safe. The storm passes and the sun comes out, the air is
the sweeter and the richer for the rain, like verses with a rhyme; there
will be more honey in the flowers. Humble he is, but wild; always in the
field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets; always wild and
humming to his flowers. Therefore I like the humble-bee, being, at heart
at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and by the
brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression
of being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn
sky. The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground, and the
livid flame to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do
in the evening.

Caught by such a cloud, I have stayed under thick larches at the edge of
plantations. They are no shelter, but conceal one perfectly. The wood
pigeons come home to their nest trees; in larches they seem to have
permanent nests, almost like rooks. Kestrels, too, come home to the
wood. Pheasants crow, but not from fear--from defiance; in fear they
scream. The boom startles them, and they instantly defy the sky. The
rabbits quietly feed on out in the field between the thistles and rushes
that so often grow in woodside pastures, quietly hopping to their
favourite places, utterly heedless how heavy the echoes may be in the
hollows of the wooded hills. Till the rain comes they take no heed
whatever, but then make for shelter. Blackbirds often make a good deal
of noise; but the soft turtle-doves coo gently, let the lightning be as
savage as it will. Nothing has the least fear. Man alone, more
senseless than a pigeon, put a god in vapour; and to this day, though the
printing press has set a foot on every threshold, numbers bow the knee
when they hear the roar the timid dove does not heed. So trustful are
the doves, the squirrels, the birds of the branches, and the creatures of
the field. Under their tuition let us rid ourselves of mental terrors,
and face death itself as calmly as they do the livid lightning; so
trustful and so content with their fate, resting in themselves and
unappalled. If but by reason and will I could reach the godlike calm and
courage of what we so thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I should
lead a nearly perfect life.

The bark of the ancient apple tree under which I have been standing is
shrunken like iron which has been heated and let cool round the rim of a
wheel. For a hundred years the horses have rubbed against it while
feeding in the aftermath. The scales of the bark are gone or smoothed
down and level, so that insects have no hiding-place. There are no
crevices for them, the horsehairs that were caught anywhere have been
carried away by birds for their nests. The trunk is smooth and columnar,
hard as iron. A hundred times the mowing-grass has grown up around it,
the birds have built their nests, the butterflies fluttered by, and the
acorns dropped from the oaks. It is a long, long time, counted by
artificial hours or by the seasons, but it is longer still in another
way. The greenfinch in the hawthorn yonder has been there since I came
out, and all the time has been happily talking to his love. He has left
the hawthorn indeed, but only for a minute or two, to fetch a few seeds,
and comes back each time more full of song-talk than ever. He notes no
slow movement of the oak's shadow on the grass; it is nothing to him and
his lady dear that the sun, as seen from his nest, is crossing from one
great bough of the oak to another. The dew even in the deepest and most
tangled grass has long since been dried, and some of the flowers that
close at noon will shortly fold their petals. The morning airs, which
breathe so sweetly, come less and less frequently as the heat increases.
Vanishing from the sky, the last fragments of cloud have left an
untarnished azure. Many times the bees have returned to their hives, and
thus the index of the day advances. It is nothing to the greenfinches;
all their thoughts are in their song-talk. The sunny moment is to them
all in all. So deeply are they rapt in it that they do not know whether
it is a moment or a year. There is no clock for feeling, for joy, for
love.

And with all their motions and stepping from bough to bough, they are not
restless; they have so much time, you see. So, too, the whitethroat in
the wild parsley; so, too, the thrush that just now peered out and partly
fluttered his wings as he stood to look. A butterfly comes and stays on
a leaf--a leaf much warmed by the sun--and shuts his wings. In a minute
he opens them, shuts them again, half wheels round, and by-and-by--just
when he chooses, and not before--floats away. The flowers open, and
remain open for hours, to the sun. Hastelessness is the only word one
can make up to describe it; there is much rest, but no haste. Each
moment, as with the greenfinches, is so full of life that it seems so
long and so sufficient in itself. Not only the days, but life itself
lengthens in summer. I would spread abroad my arms and gather more of it
to me, could I do so.

All the procession of living and growing things passes. The grass stands
up taller and still taller, the sheaths open, and the stalk arises, the
pollen clings till the breeze sweeps it. The bees rush past, and the
resolute wasps; the humble-bees, whose weight swings them along. About
the oaks and maples the brown chafers swarm, and the fern-owls at dusk,
and the blackbirds and jays by day, cannot reduce their legions while
they last. Yellow butterflies, and white, broad red admirals, and sweet
blues; think of the kingdom of flowers which is theirs! Heavy moths
burring at the edge of the copse; green, and red, and gold flies: gnats,
like smoke, around the tree-tops; midges so thick over the brook, as if
you could haul a netful; tiny leaping creatures in the grass; bronze
beetles across the path; blue dragonflies pondering on cool leaves of
water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from elm to
elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into
the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on
the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a
starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-like, up a green fern frond.
Finches undulating through the air, shooting themselves with closed
wings, and linnets happy with their young.

Golden dandelion discs--gold and orange--of a hue more beautiful, I
think, than the higher and more visible buttercup. A blackbird,
gleaming, so black is he, splashing in the runlet of water across the
gateway. A ruddy kingfisher swiftly drawing himself, as you might draw a
stroke with a pencil, over the surface of the yellow buttercups, and away
above the hedge. Hart's-tongue fern, thick with green, so green as to be
thick with its colour, deep in the ditch under the shady hazel boughs.
White meadow-sweet lifting its tiny florets, and black-flowered sedges.
You must push through the reed grass to find the sword-flags; the stout
willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but resist the foot like
underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little
black moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother, who has
dived under the water-grass, and broken the smooth surface of the
duckweed. Yellow loosestrife is rising, thick comfrey stands at the very
edge; the sandpipers run where the shore is free from bushes. Back by
the underwood the prickly and repellent brambles will presently present
us with fruit. For the squirrels the nuts are forming, green beechmast
is there--green wedges under the spray; up in the oaks the small knots,
like bark rolled up in a dot, will be acorns. Purple vetches along the
mounds, yellow lotus where the grass is shorter, and orchis succeeds to
orchis. As I write them, so these things come--not set in gradation, but
like the broadcast flowers in the mowing-grass.