where the chimneys and gables of farmhouses are partly visible; red-tiled
barns away yonder; a shepherd moving his hurdles; away again the black
funnel of an idle engine, and the fly-wheel above hawthorn bushes--all so
distinct and close under that you might almost fear to breathe for fear
of dimming the mirror. The few white clouds sailing over seemed to belong
to the fields on which their shadows were now foreshortened, now
lengthened, as if they were really part of the fields, like the crops,
and the azure sky so low down as to be the roof of the house and not at
all a separate thing. And the sun a lamp that you might almost have
pushed along his course faster with your hand; a loving and interesting
sun that wanted the wheat to ripen, and stayed there in the slow-drawn
arc of the summer day to lend a hand. Sun and sky and clouds close here
and not across any planetary space, but working with us in the same
field, shoulder to shoulder, with man. Then you might see the white doves
yonder flutter up suddenly out of the trees by the farm, little flecks of
white clouds themselves, and everywhere all throughout the plain an
exquisite silence, a delicious repose, not one clang or harshness of
sound to shatter the beauty of it. There you might stand on the high down
among the thyme and watch it, hour after hour, and still no interruption;
nothing to break it up. It was something like the broad folio of an
ancient illuminated manuscript, in gold, gules, blue, green; with
foliated scrolls and human figures, somewhat clumsy and thick, but
quaintly drawn, and bold in their intense realism.

There was another wheat-field by the side of which I used to walk
sometimes in the evenings, as the grains in the cars began to grow firm.
The path ran for a mile beside it--a mile of wheat in one piece--all
those million million stalks the same height, all with about the same
number of grains in each car, all ripening together. The hue of the
surface travelled along as you approached; the tint of yellow shifted