walker, who is content to sit under a hedge and wait for the best things, to make his gods. The lanes are peopled with no fairies such as in Wales and Ireland nimbly feed the fantasy, which here, in consequence, is apt to take flight in wonderful ways. I remember one (and Ovid was not at all in his mind) who was all but confident that he saw Persephone on flat pastures and red ploughlands, gleaming between green trees, when the hawthorn was not yet over and the roses had begun, and the sapphire dragon-fly was afloat, on the Cherwell, as the boat made a cool sound among the river’s hair, betwixt Water Eaton and Islip. On the quiet, misty, autumn mornings, the hum of threshing machines was solemn; and there at least it was a true harmony of autumn, and the man casting sheaves from the rick was exalted—
Neque ilium
Flava Ceres alto nequiquam spectat Olympo.
Everywhere the fancy, unaided by earlier fancies, sets to work very busily in these fields. I have on several afternoons gone some way towards the beginning of a new mythology, which might in a thousand years puzzle the Germans. The shadowy, half-apprehended faces of new deities float before my eyes, and I have wondered whether Apollo and Diana are not immortal presences wheresoever there are awful trees and alternating spaces of cool or sunlit lawn.... In the lanes there seems to be another religion for the night. There is a fitful wind, and so slow that as we walk we[Pg 500] can follow its path while it shakes the heavy leaves and dewy grass; and we feel as if we were trespassing on holy ground; the land seems to have changed masters, or rather to have One. Often I saw a clean-limbed beech, pale and slender, yet firm in its loftiness, that shook delicately arched branches at the top, and below held out an arm on which a form of schoolboys might have sat,—rising out of fine grass and printing its perfect outlines on the sky,—and I could fancy it enjoyed a life of pleasure that was health, beauty that was strength, thought that was repose.
The Oxford country is rich in footpaths, as any one will know that goes the round from Folly Bridge, through South Hinksey, to the “Fox” at Boar’s Hill (where the scent of wallflower and hawthorn comes in through the window with the sound of the rain and the nightingale); and then away, skirting Wootton and Cumnor, past the “Bear” (with its cool flagged room looking on a field of gold, and Cumnor Church tower among elms); and back over the Hurst, where he turns, under the seven firs and solitary elm, to ponder the long, alluring view towards Stanton Harcourt and Bablock Hythe. He may take that walk many times, or wish to take it, and yet never touch the same footpaths; and never be sure of the waste patch of bluebell and furze, haunted by linnet and whinchat; the newly harrowed field, where the stones shine like ivory after rain; the green lane, where the beech leaves lie in February, and rise out of the snow, untouched by it, in polished amber; the orchard, where the grass is[Pg 501] gloomy in April with the shadow of bright cherry flowers.
One such footpath I remember, that could be seen falling among woods and rising over hills, faint and winding, and disappearing at last,—like a vision of the perfect quiet life. We started once along it, over one of the many fair little Oxford bridges, one that cleared the stream in three graceful leaps of arching stone. The hills were cloudy with woods in the heat. On either hand, at long distances apart, lay little grey houses under scalloped capes of thatch, and here and there white houses, like children of that sweet land—albi circum ubera nati. For the most part we saw only the great hawthorn hedge, which gave us the sense of a companion always abreast of us, yet always cool and fresh as if just setting out. It was cooler when a red-hot bicyclist passed by. A sombre river, noiselessly sauntering seaward, far away dropped with a murmur, among leaves, into a pool. That sound alone made tremble the glassy dome of silence that extended miles on miles. All things were lightly powdered with gold, by a lustre that seemed to have been sifted through gauze. The hazy sky, striving to be blue, was reflected as purple in the waters. There, too, sunken and motionless, lay amber willow leaves; some floated down. Between the sailing leaves, against the false sky, hung the willow shadows,—shadows of willows overhead, with waving foliage, like the train of a bird of paradise. Everywhere the languid perfumes of corruption. Brown leaves laid their fingers on the[Pg 502] cheek as they fell; and here and there the hoary reverse of a willow leaf gleamed in the crannied bases of the trees. A plough, planted in mid-field, was curved like the wings of a bird alighting.
We could not walk as slowly as the river flowed; yet that seemed the true pace to move in life, and so reach the great grey sea. Hand in hand with the river wound the path, until twilight began to drive her dusky flocks across the west, and a light wind knitted the aspen branches against a silver sky with a crescent moon, as, troubled tenderly by autumnal maladies of soul, we came to our place of rest,—a grey, immemorial house with innumerable windows.[Pg 503]