Nature near London / by Richard Jefferies.

  • Richard Jefferies
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nature near London / by Richard Jefferies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    midsummer hum, now sinking, now sonorously in- creasing oyer the oaks. An effulgence fills the southern boughs, which the eye cannot sustain, hut which it knows is there. The sun at his meridian pours forth his light, for- getting, in all the inspiration of his strength and glory, that without an altar-screen of green his love must scorch. Joy in life; joy in life. The ears listen, and want more : the eyes are gratified with gazing, and desire yet further; the nostrils are filled with the sweet odours of flower and sap. The touch, too, has its pleasures, dallying with leaf and flower. Can you not almost grasp the odour-laden air and hold it in the hollow of the hand ? Leaving the spot at last, and turning again into the lane, the shadows dance upon the white dust under the feet, irregularly circular spots of light surrounded with umbra shift with the shifting branches. By the wayside lie rings of dandelion stalks carelessly cast down by the child who made them, and tufts of delicate grasses gathered for their beauty but now sprinkled with dust. Wisps of hay hang from the lower boughs of the oaks where they brushed against the passing load. After a time, when the corn is ripening, the herb betony flowers on the mounds under the oaks. Fol- lowing the lane down the hill and across the small furze common at the bottom, the marks of traffic fade away, the dust ceases, and is succeeded by sward. The hedgerows on either side are here higher than ever, and are thickly fringed with bramble bushes, which sometimes encroach on the waggon ruts in the
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