". . . . dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves.
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move."
A cool and quiet spot. Like the poet who found it pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat, "To see the tumult and not feel the stir," we too, from the kindly shadow of these great chestnut trees, can look out on the woodland in its pride of summer glory, with its flowers and its fragrance and its greenness, nor feel the heat and glare and the pitiless weight of the sunshine.
Day after day, week after week, there has been
". . that nameless splendour everywhere
That makes the passers in the city street
Congratulate each other as they meet."
Yet perhaps the full beauty of such weather, its wealth of flowers and foliage, its abundance of bird and insect life, above all its half-tropic heat, is for the country rather than the town. Among stone walls and pavements summer days are too often weariness, and summer nights but stifling. In the country the glare of noon is tempered by cool winds, softened by grass and foliage. There, too, the hot air of night is sweetened with the breath of honeysuckle and jasmine; and through wide open windows the scent of the roses floats up to us