“So priketh hem nature in hir corages;
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages.”
Half an hour later I was away by the early train that carries the branch mails and a few workmen, and was delivered at the little wayside station with the letters. The kind air went singing past as I swung along the reverberating road between the high tree-crowned banks which we call hedges in merry Devon, with all the world to myself and the Brethren. A great blackbird flew out with a loud “chook, chook,” and the red of the haw on his yellow bill. A robin trilled from a low rose-bush; two wrens searched diligently on a fallen tree for breakfast, quite unconcerned when I rested a moment beside them; and a shrewmouse slipped across the road followed directly by its mate. March violets bloomed under the sheltered hedge with here and there a pale primrose; a frosted bramble spray still held its autumn tints clinging to the semblance of the past; and great branches of snowy blackthorn broke the barren hedgeway as if spring made a mock of winter’s snows.
Light of heart and foot with the new wine of the year I sped on again, stray daffodils lighting the wayside, until I heard the voice of the stream and reached the field gate which leads to the lower meadows. There before me lay spring’s pageant; green pennons waving, dainty maids curtseying, and a host of joyous yellow trumpeters proclaiming ‘Victory’ to an awakened earth. They range in serried ranks right down to the river, so that a man must walk warily to reach the water’s edge where they stand gazing down at themselves in fairest semblance like their most tragic progenitor, and, rising from the bright grass in their thousands, stretch away until they melt in a golden cloud at the far end of the misty mead. Through the field gate and across the road I see them, starring the steep earth bank that leads to the upper copse, gleaming like pale flames against the dark tree-boles. There they have but frail tenure; here, in the meadows, they reign supreme.
At the upper end of the field the river provides yet closer sanctuary for these children of the spring. Held in its embracing arms lies an island long and narrow, some thirty feet by twelve, a veritable untrod Eldorado, glorious in gold from end to end, a fringe of reeds by the water’s edge, and save for that—daffodils. A great oak stands at the meadow’s neck, an oak with gnarled and wandering roots where a man may rest, for it is bare of daffodils save for a group of three, and a solitary one apart growing close to the old tree’s side. I sat down by my lonely little sister, blue sky overhead, green grass at my feet decked, like the pastures of the Blessèd, in glorious sheen; a sea of triumphant, golden heads tossing blithely back as the wind swept down to play with them at his pleasure.
It was all mine to have and to hold without severing a single slender stem or harbouring a thought of covetousness; mine, as the whole earth was mine, to appropriate to myself without the burden and bane of worldly possession. “Thou sayest that I am—a King,” said the Lord before Pilate, and “My kingdom is not of this world.” We who are made kings after His likeness possess all things, not after this world’s fashion but in proportion to our poverty; and when we cease to toil and spin, are arrayed as the lilies, in a glory transcending Solomon’s. Bride Poverty—she who climbed the Cross with Christ—stretched out eager hands to free us from our chains, but we flee from her, and lay up treasure against her importunity, while Amytas on his seaweed bed weeps tears of pure pity for crave-mouth Cæsar of great possessions.
Presently another of spring’s lovers cried across the water “Cuckoo, cuckoo,” and the voice of the stream sang joyously in unison. It is free from burden, this merry little river, and neither weir nor mill bars its quick way to the sea as it completes the eternal circle, lavishing gifts of coolness and refreshment on the children of the meadows.
It has its birth on the great lone moor, cradled in a wonderful peat-smelling bog, with a many-hued coverlet of soft mosses—pale gold, orange, emerald, tawny, olive and white, with the red stain of sun-dew and tufted cotton-grass. Under the old grey rocks which watch it rise, yellow-eyed tormantil stars the turf, and bids “Godspeed” to the little child of earth and sky. Thus the journey begins; and with ever-increasing strength the stream carves a way through the dear brown peat, wears a fresh wrinkle on the patient stones, and patters merrily under a clapper bridge which spanned its breadth when the mistletoe reigned and Bottor, the grim rock idol, exacted the toll of human life that made him great. On and on goes the stream, for it may not stay; leaving of its freshness with the great osmunda that stretches eager roots towards the running water; flowing awhile with a brother stream, to part again east and west as each takes up his separate burden of service—my friend to cherish the lower meadows in their flowery joyance—and so by the great sea-gate back to sky and earth again.
The river of God is full of water. The streets of the City are pure gold. Verily, here also having nothing we possess all things.
The air was keen and still as I walked back in the early evening, and a daffodil light was in the sky as if Heaven mirrored back earth’s radiance. Near the station some children flitted past, like little white miller moths homing through the dusk. As I climbed the hill the moon rode high in a golden field—it was daffodils to the last.