The Pageant of Summer

R >> Richard Jefferies >> The Pageant of Summer


Now follows the gorse, and the pink rest-harrow, and the sweet lady's
bedstraw, set as it were in the midst of a little thorn-bush. The broad
repetition of the yellow clover is not to be written; acre upon acre, and
not one spot of green, as if all the green had been planed away, leaving
only the flowers to which the bees come by the thousand from far and
near. But one white campion stands in the midst of the lake of yellow.
The field is scented as though a hundred hives of honey had been emptied
on it. Along the mound by it the bluebells are seeding, the hedge has
been cut and the ground is strewn with twigs. Among those seeding
bluebells and dry twigs and mosses I think a titlark has his nest, as he
stays all day there and in the oak over. The pale clear yellow of
charlock, sharp and clear, promises the finches bushels of seed for their
young. Under the scarlet of the poppies the larks run, and then for
change of colour soar into the blue. Creamy honeysuckle on the hedge
around the cornfield, buds of wild rose everywhere, but no sweet petal
yet. Yonder, where the wheat can climb no higher up the slope, are the
purple heath-bells, thyme and flitting stone-chats.

The lone barn shut off by acres of barley is noisy with sparrows. It is
their city, and there is a nest in every crevice, almost under every
tile. Sometimes the partridges run between the ricks, and when the bats
come out of the roof, leverets play in the waggon-track. At even a fern-
owl beats by, passing close to the eaves whence the moths issue. On the
narrow waggon-track which descends along a coombe and is worn in chalk,
the heat pours down by day as if an invisible lens in the atmosphere
focussed the sun's rays. Strong woody knapweed endures it, so does
toadflax and pale blue scabious, and wild mignonette. The very sun of
Spain burns and burns and ripens the wheat on the edge of the coombe, and
will only let the spring moisten a yard or two around it; but there a few
rushes have sprung, and in the water itself brooklime with blue flowers
grows so thickly that nothing but a bird could find space to drink. So
down again from this sun of Spain to woody coverts where the wild hops
are blocking every avenue, and green-flowered bryony would fain climb to
the trees; where grey-flecked ivy winds spirally about the red rugged
bark of pines, where burdocks fight for the footpath, and teazle-heads
look over the low hedges. Brake-fern rises five feet high; in some way
woodpeckers are associated with brake, and there seem more of them where
it flourishes. If you count the depth and strength of its roots in the
loamy sand, add the thickness of its flattened stem, and the width of its
branching fronds, you may say that it comes near to be a little tree.
Beneath where the ponds are bushy mare's-tails grow, and on the moist
banks jointed pewterwort; some of the broad bronze leaves of water-weeds
seem to try and conquer the pond and cover it so firmly that a wagtail
may run on them. A white butterfly follows along the waggon-road, the
pheasants slip away as quietly as the butterfly flies, but a jay
screeches loudly and flutters in high rage to see us. Under an ancient
garden wall among matted bines of trumpet convolvulus, there is a hedge-
sparrow's nest overhung with ivy on which even now the last black berries
cling.

There are minute white flowers on the top of the wall, out of reach, and
lichen grows against it dried by the sun till it looks ready to crumble.
By the gateway grows a thick bunch of meadow geranium, soon to flower;
over the gate is the dusty highway road, quiet but dusty, dotted with the
innumerable foot-marks of a flock of sheep that has passed. The sound of
their bleating still comes back, and the bees driven up by their feet
have hardly had time to settle again on the white clover beginning to
flower on the short roadside sward. All the hawthorn leaves and briar
and bramble, the honeysuckle, too, is gritty with the dust that has been
scattered upon it. But see--can it be? Stretch a hand high, quick, and
reach it down; the first, the sweetest, the dearest rose of June. Not
yet expected, for the time is between the may and the roses, least of all
here in the hot and dusty highway; but it is found--the first rose of
June.

Straight go the white petals to the heart; straight the mind's glance
goes back to how many other pageants of summer in old times! When
perchance the sunny days were even more sunny; when the stilly oaks were
full of mystery, lurking like the Druid's mistletoe in the midst of their
mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came back to it again from every
flower; as the sunshine was reflected from them, so the feeling in the
heart returned tenfold. To the dreamy summer haze, love gave a deep
enchantment, the colours were fairer, the blue more lovely in the lucid
sky. Each leaf finer, and the gross earth enamelled beneath the feet. A
sweet breath on the air, a soft warm hand in the touch of the sunshine, a
glance in the gleam of the rippled waters, a whisper in the dance of the
shadows. The ethereal haze lifted the heavy oaks and they were buoyant
on the mead, the rugged bark was chastened and no longer rough, each
slender flower beneath them again refined. There was a presence
everywhere, though unseen, on the open hills, and not shut out under the
dark pines. Dear were the June roses then because for another gathered.
Yet even dearer now with so many years as it were upon the petals; all
the days that have been before, all the heart-throbs, all our hopes lie
in this opened bud. Let not the eyes grow dim, look not back but
forward; the soul must uphold itself like the sun. Let us labour to make
the heart grow larger as we become older, as the spreading oak gives more
shelter. That we could but take to the soul some of the greatness and
the beauty of the summer!

Still the pageant moves. The song-talk of the finches rises and sinks
like the tinkle of a waterfall. The greenfinches have been by me all the
while. A bullfinch pipes now and then further up the hedge where the
brambles and thorns are thickest. Boldest of birds to look at, he is
always in hiding. The shrill tone of a goldfinch came just now from the
ash branches, but he has gone on. Every four or five minutes a chaffinch
sings close by, and another fills the interval near the gateway. There
are linnets somewhere, but I cannot from the old apple tree fix their
exact place. Thrushes have sung and ceased; they will begin again in ten
minutes. The blackbirds do not cease; the note uttered by a blackbird in
the oak yonder before it can drop is taken up by a second near the top of
the field, and ere it falls is caught by a third on the left-hand side.
From one of the topmost boughs of an elm there fell the song of a willow
warbler for a while; one of the least of birds, he often seeks the
highest branches of the highest tree.

A yellowhammer has just flown from a bare branch in the gateway, where he
has been perched and singing a full hour. Presently he will commence
again, and as the sun declines will sing him to the horizon, and then
again sing till nearly dusk. The yellowhammer is almost the longest of
all the singers; he sits and sits and has no inclination to move. In the
spring he sings, in the summer he sings, and he continues when the last
sheaves are being carried from the wheat field. The redstart yonder has
given forth a few notes, the whitethroat flings himself into the air at
short intervals and chatters, the shrike calls sharp and determined,
faint but shrill calls descend from the swifts in the air. These
descend, but the twittering notes of the swallows do not reach so
far--they are too high to-day. A cuckoo has called by the brook, and now
fainter from a greater distance. That the titlarks are singing I know,
but not within hearing from here; a dove, though, is audible, and a
chiffchaff has twice passed. Afar beyond the oaks at the top of the
field dark specks ascend from time to time, and after moving in wide
circles for a while descend again to the corn. These must be larks; but
their notes are not powerful enough to reach me, though they would were
it not for the song in the hedges, the hum of innumerable insects, and
the ceaseless "crake, crake" of landrails. There are at least two
landrails in the mowing-grass; one of them just now seemed coming
straight towards the apple tree, and I expected in a minute to see the
grass move, when the bird turned aside and entered the tufts and wild
parsley by the hedge. Thence the call has come without a moment's pause,
"crake, crake," till the thick hedge seems filled with it. Tits have
visited the apple tree over my head, a wren has sung in the willow, or
rather on a dead branch projecting lower down than the leafy boughs, and
a robin across under the elms in the opposite hedge. Elms are a
favourite tree of robins--not the upper branches, but those that grow
down the trunk, and are the first to have leaves in spring.

The yellowhammer is the most persistent individually, but I think the
blackbirds when listened to are the masters of the fields. Before one
can finish, another begins, like the summer ripples succeeding behind
each other, so that the melodious sound merely changes its position. Now
here, now in the corner, then across the field, again in the distant
copse, where it seems about to sink, when it rises again almost at hand.
Like a great human artist, the blackbird makes no effort, being fully
conscious that his liquid tone cannot be matched. He utters a few
delicious notes, and carelessly quits the green stage of the oak till it
pleases him to sing again. Without the blackbird, in whose throat the
sweetness of the green fields dwells, the days would be only partly
summer. Without the violet, all the bluebells and cowslips could not
make a spring, and without the blackbird, even the nightingale would be
but half welcome. It is not yet noon, these songs have been ceaseless
since dawn; this evening, after the yellowhammer has sung the sun down,
when the moon rises and the faint stars appear, still the cuckoo will
call, and the grasshopper lark, the landrail's "crake, crake" will echo
from the mound, a warbler or a blackcap will utter his notes, and even at
the darkest of the summer night the swallows will hardly sleep in their
nests. As the morning sky grows blue, an hour before the sun, up will
rise the larks, singing and audible now, the cuckoo will recommence, and
the swallows will start again on their tireless journey. So that the
songs of the summer birds are as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall
which plays day and night.

I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of the
long grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I
seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the
south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the
immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and
blackbird; from all of them I receive a little. Each gives me something
of the pure joy they gather for themselves. In the blackbird's melody
one note is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for
me, though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have
collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive some,
at least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough; never
stay long enough--whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward
under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-scented hills.
Hour after hour, and still not enough. Or walking the footpath was never
long enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary.
The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new
thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty
are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay
among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time. Let
the shadow advance upon the dial--I can watch it with equanimity while it
is there to be watched. It is only when the shadow is _not_ there, when
the clouds of winter cover it, that the dial is terrible. The invisible
shadow goes on and steals from us. But now, while I can see the shadow
of the tree and watch it slowly gliding along the surface of the grass,
it is mine. These are the only hours that are not wasted--these hours
that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all
else is illusion, or mere endurance. Does this reverie of flowers and
waterfall and song form an ideal, a human ideal, in the mind? It does;
much the same ideal that Phidias sculptured of man and woman filled with
a godlike sense of the violet fields of Greece, beautiful beyond thought,
calm as my turtle-dove before the lurid lightning of the unknown. To be
beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If
I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it.

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