CHAPTER III
NOT HERE, O APOLLO!
It was a clay country of small fields that rose and fell slightly, not in curves, but in stiff lines which ended abruptly in the low, dividing hedges. Here and there we passed small woods of oak, hardly more than overgrown hedges, where keepers shot the jays. There were few streams—and those polluted. North and south the land rose up in some pomp to steep hills planted with oak and beech and fir, and between these, broad meadows and hop gardens, which now and then caught the faint light on their dry brown or moist green and gleamed desirably. The wind was in the north; it had rained in the night, and yet the morning was dull and the sun white and small. There was some vice in the wind or in the foliage or in the grass that now began to be long—some vice that made the land sad and cold and unawakening, with the surliness of a man who cannot sleep and will not rise.
The woods became more dense as we walked; not far ahead the oaks closed in and expounded the contours of the land by their summits. But our path led away from them, and we were about to lose sight of them when, gently as the alighting of a bird, the sunlight dropped among the tops of the oaks, which were yellow and purple with young leaves, and blessed them. We turned. There was the sun held fast among the fresh leaves and green trunks, as if Apollo had changed into a woodland god, and forsaken the long lonely ways of heaven, and resolved no more to spend a half of his days in the under world. How the nymphs clapped their hands at this advent, abandoning Pan, and bringing to the new lord all choicest herbs and highest fair grasses and golden flowers that should make him content to be away from the clouds of sunset and dawn, and blue flowers on which his feet should tread without envy of the infinite paths of the sky, and white flowers that should suffice for his shepherding in place of the flocks of the high desolate noon! How they drove up grey dove and green woodpecker to shake their wings and shine about the new god’s head as they flew among the branches! How Pan himself, that does not heed dark hours, crept away from his light-hearted nymphs and hid in the sombre reeds! “Ever-young Apollo! Eternal Apollo! Young Apollo!” were the cries. “Why have we ever served a goat-foot god?” And so they made haste to serve him with the clearest honey of the wild bees, the cream from the farm that was most clean, the fruits that yet preserved flavours of a past summer and autumn in the granary close by, and fresh cresses from the spring; nor would some of the little satyrs forget the golden ale and amber bread and cheese of the colour of primroses; and all seemed assured that never again would Apollo forsake the red and yellow leaves of the full oaks or the mid-forest grasses or the lilied pools standing among willow and alder and ash. And we saw that the light was passing in triumph slowly, and accompanied by the cooing of doves, along the wood from oak top to oak top.
CHAPTER IV
WALKING WITH GOOD COMPANY
The lightning grows upon the sky like a tumultuous thorn tree of fire. The thunder grumbles with interrupted cadences, and then, joyful as a poet, hits the long, grave, reverberating period at last, repeats it triumphantly, and muttering dies away. The pheasants in the woods have got over their alarm and have ceased to crow, and for a time the heavy perpendicular rain submerges the meadow and farmhouse and mid-field oak and the steep downs with their cloudy woods; the birds are still.
Then the rain wastes away. I can count the drops on the broad burdock leaves; and the evening sun comes through horizontally; and it is good to be afoot and making for something remote, I know not why. Each meadow shines amid its encircling hedges like a lake of infinitely deep emerald. On the dark red ploughland the flints glitter with constellated or solitary lights. In the sweet copses, where the willow wren sings again in the highest branches, the thorn foliage is so bright that the dark stems are invisible. The purple oak tops reach wonderfully into the sombre, bluish sky, and over them the wood pigeons turn rapidly from darkness to splendour—from splendour to darkness, as they wheel and clap their wings. The cuckoos shout again; first one, so far off that the character, without the notes, of the song is recognised; then another with a wild clearness in its voice as if the rainy air aided it; and then one just overhead, in the luminous grey branches of an oak, so that it can be heard trying hard and enjoying its own strength. The hills rejoice with long shadows and yellow light; the tall hares stretch themselves and gallop. The little pools hum pleasantly as the rain drips from their overhanging brier and bramble into the leaden water with bright splash. And in our own muscles and hearts the evening strives to form an aspiration that shall suit the joy of the hills, the meadows, the copses and their people. We will go on, they say; we will go on and on, through the beeches on the hill and up over the ridge and down again through the grey wet meadows and to the old road between hawthorn and guelder-rose at the foot of the downs; and still on, not as before, but out of time and space, until we come—home—to some refuge of beauty and serenity in the heart of the immense evening. And so we will, though we shall be wise to find our achievement in the rapture of walking, or in the short rest upon a gate where we may surprise the twilight at her consecrating task. It is well, too, to talk, not to walk silently and weave such dreams as will make our host to-night intolerable; or if not to talk, then to sing some old song whose melody finds a strange fitness to our minds, in spite of the words, as for example—
“There’s not a drunkard lives in our town
Who is not glad that malt is gone down—