lliferous plants, perhaps, is not quite liked; if
brushed or bruised they give out a bitter greenish scent. Under their
cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against or on the
stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain supports.
With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in the ditch
itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge was wrapped
and thickened. No cunning of glance could see through it; it would have
needed a ladder to help any one look over.

It was between the may and the June roses. The may bloom had fallen, and
among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed
the red-wings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed, straight and
towering while there was a thorn or an ash sapling, or a yellow-green
willow, to uphold them, and then curving over towards the meadow. The
buds were on them, but not yet open; it was between the may and the rose.

As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible
portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so
the air lingering among the wood and hedges--green waves and
billows--became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched
hawthorn leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, narrow ash sprays and oval
willows; from vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under; brushed
from the waving grasses and stiffening corn, the dust of the sunshine was
borne along and breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of
bees and birds, the stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It
was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the
earth went up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of
the Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the summer--to
the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature in the grass, up to
the highest swallow. Winter shows us Matter in its dead form, like the
Primary rocks, like granite and basalt--clear but cold and frozen
crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising from the
earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the
solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves. Living things
leap in the grass, living things drift upon the air, living things are
coming forth to breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the
immense weight of Matter--the dead, the crystallized--press ponderously
on the thinking m