The Life of the Fields, Issue 44Chatto and Windus, 1884 - 262 pages |
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A. B. GROSART advertisement arms bank barn owl beat beautiful beech birds blackbird blue boughs bowsprit brook brown bushes called chaffinch cloth extra cloth limp cloud colour copse corncrake cottages crake creatures Crown 8vo dark distance earth edge Edited eyes Fcap field fish flowers gate gilt gleams grass green hawk hawthorn hedge heron hills hollow horses hover illustrated boards jack kestrel labour leaves light London look masts meadow miles moorhens nest never Novels numbers otter paper passing pheasants PICCADILLY NOVELS poacher pond Post 8vo Pyecombe RICHARD JEFFERIES ricks rises rooks round rushes shadow shot side slip sometimes sound spot spring stoats straight stream summer sunlight sunshine surface sward things thought thrushes trees trout villager visible Vols walk watch wheat wild wind wings woods yellow yellowhammer yonder
Popular passages
Page 45 - My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately the sunshine and the Summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take from all their beauty and enjoy their glory.
Page 63 - I seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from all of them I receive a little. Each gives me something of the pure joy they gather for themselves. In the blackbird's melody one note is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me, though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have...
Page 64 - FIELDS. whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-scented hills. Hour after hour, and still not enough. Or walking the footpath was never long enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary. The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among...
Page 62 - ... when listened to are the masters of the fields. Before one can finish another begins, like the summer ripples succeeding behind each other, so that the melodious sound merely changes its position. Now here, now in the corner, then across the field, again in the distant copse, where it seems about to sink, when it rises again almost at hand. Like a great human artist, the blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious that his liquid tone cannot be matched. He utters a few delicious notes, and...
Page 64 - It is only when the shadow is not there, when the clouds of winter cover it, that the dial is terrible. The invisible shadow goes on and steals from us. But now, while I can see the shadow of the tree and watch it slowly gliding along the surface of the grass, it is mine. These are the only hours that are not wasted^ — these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance.
Page 41 - Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like summer, "soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of grass or leaves.
Page 49 - Brightly blue and surrounded by greenest grass, imbedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the grass, these growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves the sun. From this island I 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...
Page 59 - Straight go the white petals to the heart; straight the mind's glance goes back to how many other pageants of summer in old times! When perchance the sunny days were even more sunny; when the stilly oaks were full of mystery, lurking like the Druid's mistletoe in the midst of their mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came back to it again from every flower; as the sunshine was reflected from them so the feeling in the heart returned tenfold. To the dreamy summer haze love gave a deep enchantment,...
Page 69 - ... which in their own existence throw light and beauty on each other, but in artificial colours repel. Take the table indoors again, and the book: the thoughts and imaginings of others are vain, and of your own too deep to be written. For the mind is filled with the exceeding beauty of these things, and their great wondrousness and marvel. Never yet have I been able to write what I felt about the sunlight only. Colour and form and light are as magic to me. It is a trance. It requires a language...