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Field and Hedgerow - Being the Last Essays of Richard Jefferies by Richard Jefferies
page 37 of 295 (12%)


A July fly went sideways over the long grass. His wings made a burr about
him like a net, beating so fast they wrapped him round with a cloud.
Every now and then, as he flew over the trees of grass, a taller one than
common stopped him, and there he clung, and then the eye had time to see
the scarlet spots--the loveliest colour--on his wings. The wind swung the
bennet and loosened his hold, and away he went again over the grasses,
and not one jot did he care if they were _Poa_ or _Festuca_, or _Bromus_
or _Hordeum_, or any other name. Names were nothing to him; all he had to
do was to whirl his scarlet spots about in the brilliant sun, rest when
he liked, and go on again. I wonder whether it is a joy to have bright
scarlet spots, and to be clad in the purple and gold of life; is the
colour felt by the creature that wears it? The rose, restful of a dewy
morn before the sunbeams have topped the garden wall, must feel a joy in
its own fragrance, and know the exquisite hue of its stained petals. The
rose sleeps in its beauty.

The fly whirls his scarlet-spotted wings about and splashes himself with
sunlight, like the children on the sands. He thinks not of the grass and
sun; he does not heed them at all--and that is why he is so happy-any
more than the barefoot children ask why the sea is there, or why it does
not quite dry up when it ebbs. He is unconscious; he lives without
thinking about living; and if the sunshine were a hundred hours long,
still it would not be long enough. No, never enough of sun and sliding
shadows that come like a hand over the table to lovingly reach our
shoulder, never enough of the grass that smells sweet as a flower, not if
we could live years and years equal in number to the tides that have
ebbed and flowed counting backwards four years to every day and night,
backward still till we found out which came first, the night or the day.
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