“Consider the work of God.”
We have passed, from late Spring into Summer. Let us go out into the balmy air and mark what changes have passed over the land since we had our Spring scamper among the fields. It will befit these graver months of the year soberly to walk now. And a quiet sauntering walk over the fields is in truth a delightful thing upon a Summer’s day.
How delicious to thread the narrow parting through the deep hay, just ready to be cut, meadow after meadow full of tall, silky, waving grass; here a patch feathery, and of silvery lilac hue; here the rough crowfoot; here the drooping oat-grass; here trembling, delicate pyramids; here miniature bulrushes; and, choice and rare, the graceful quaking grass, with its thin filaments, and its fruit shot with faint purple, and pale green, and light brown. Numberless flowers,—gold, and rose, and crimson, and lilac, and amethyst,—these smile up at you close to the path, and give a sweet hint of stronger colour, far away throughout the hues and many unpronounced tints of the grass.
You spring over a stile, and, sweet surprise! come upon a field half-mown. It is the first you have seen this year,—the first deep ranks of close tall growth falling before the scythe,—the first scent of hay; and the first waft of this is to the scent what the first note of the cuckoo is to the ear. There the deep swathes lie in long rows, the innocent sweet flowers looking up at first with something of sad wonder, but soon drooping in a death which shall not be called untimely, because it is useful, and following on completed work. Of it we may say with the wise king, that “being made perfect in a short time, it fulfilled a long time.” And, like a loved memory after a holy death, the scent of the dying grass and flowers lingers sweetly in the soft air.
Well, we surmount another stile, and enter a wheat-field. How beautiful the myriad stalks and the broad drooping leaves, of a more sober bluer green than that of grass! I always notice that as soon as the hay is made, or making, the full bulging sheaths of the wheat begin to open, and to divulge the secret wealth of the green ear. The pointed flag falls over it; but very soon it bursts the swaddling bands, and rises proudly above the now obsequious deposed leaves, like an heir above his nurses. And then the whole wheat-field stands in blossom, the little trembling stamens escaping all over the husks, and the great width of tall ears begins its solemn stately waving and bending, and its undying whisper in the faint warm Summer airs.
