quietly feed on out in the field between the thistles and rushes that so
often grow in woodside pastures, quietly hopping to their favourite
places, utterly heedless how heavy the echoes may be in the hollows of
the wooded hills. Till the rain comes they take no heed whatever, but
then make for shelter. Blackbirds often make a good deal of noise; but
the soft turtle-doves coo gently, let the lightning be as savage as it
will. Nothing has the least fear. Man alone, more senseless than a
pigeon, put a god in vapour; and to this day, though the printing press
has set a foot on every threshold, numbers bow the knee when they hear
the roar the timid dove does not heed. So trustful are the doves, the
squirrels, the birds of the branches, and the creatures of the field.
Under their tuition let us rid ourselves of mental terrors, and face
death itself as calmly as they do the livid lightning; so trustful and so
content with their fate, resting in themselves and unappalled. If but by
reason and will I could reach the godlike calm and courage of what we so
thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I should lead a nearly perfect
life.

The bark of the ancient apple tree under which I have been standing is
shrunken like iron which has been heated and let cool round the rim of a
wheel. For a hundred years the horses have rubbed against it while
feeding in the aftermath. The scales of the bark are gone or smoothed
down and level, so that insects have no hiding-place. There are no
crevices for them, the horsehairs that were caught anywhere have been
carried away by birds for their nests. The trunk is smooth and columnar,
hard as iron. A hundred times the mowing-grass has grown up around it,
the birds have built their nests, the butterflies fluttered by, and the
acorns dropped from the oaks. It is a long, long time, counted by
artificial hours or by the seasons, but it is longer still in another
way. The greenfinch in the hawthorn yonder has been there since I came