look down into the depth of the grasses. Red sorrel spires--deep drinkers
of reddest sun wine--stand the boldest, and in their numbers threaten the
buttercups. To these in the distance they give the gipsy-gold tint--the
reflection of fire on plates of the precious metal. It will show even on
a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say. Gather the open
marguerite daisies, and they seem large--so wide a disc, such fingers of
rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much green. Clover heads
of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden footpath. Like clubs from
Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied in shape: some tend to a
point--the foxtails--some are hard and cylindrical; others, avoiding the
club shape, put forth the slenderest branches with fruit of seed at the
ends, which tremble as the air goes by. Their stalks are ripening and
becoming of the colour of hay while yet the long blades remain green.

Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails are succeeded by
foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow blades, but never become
monotonous; sorrel stands by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed of
veronica at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of flowers,
and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows oak and elm ranks with
elm, but the woodlands are pleasant; however many times reduplicated,
their beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days; the sun rises on
the same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue sky, but did we
ever have enough of them? No, not in a hundred years! There seems always
a depth, somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that has not been seen through,
a corner full of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which may give us
something. Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they pass on for
the most part bound on a long journey, across to the clover fields or up
to the thyme lands; only a few go down into the mowing-grass. The hive
bees are the most impatient of insects; they cannot bear to entangle
their wings beating against grasses or boughs. Not one will enter a