every blossom coral-red. The living blue above throbs with the tremulous
song of innumerable larks; the measured chant of cuckoos awakens the
woods; and through the thickets a whole world's gladness sings itself
forth from the throat of thrush and blackbird. Through the whole land
between the four seas benediction is everywhere; blue-bells and the rosy
fingers of heath deck the mountain-tops, where the grouse are crooning
to each other among the whins; down the hillsides into every valley pour
gladness and greenness and song; there are flowers everywhere, even to
the very verge of the whispering sea. There, among the gray bent-spikes
and brackens on the sandhills, primroses weave their yellow wreaths; and
little pansies, golden and blue and purple, marshal their weird eyes
against the spears of dark blue hyacinths, till the rich tribute of
wild thyme makes peace between them.

The blue sky overhead, with its flocks of sunlit clouds, softly bends
over the gentle bosom of the earth. A living spirit throbs everywhere,
palpable, audible, full of sweetness and sadness immeasurable--sadness
that is only a more secret joy.

Then the day grows weary, making way for the magic of evening and the
oncoming dark with its mystery. The tree-stems redden with the sunset;
there is a chill sigh in the wind; the leaves turn before it, burnished
against the purple sky. As the gloom rises up out of the earth, bands of
dark red gather on the horizon, seaming the clear bronze of the sky,
that passes upward into olive-color, merging in dark blue overhead. The
sun swings down behind the hills, and purple darkness comes down out of
the sky; the red fades from the tree-stems, the cloud-colors die away;
the whole world glimmers with the fading whiteness of twilight. Silence
gathers itself together out of the dark, deepened, not broken, by the
hushing of the wind among the beech-leaves, or the startled cluck of a