nd there. The stars appear and the
whole dome of the summer night is visible, for in a level plain like
this a slight elevation brings the horizon into view. Without moon the
June nights are white; a faint white light shows through the trees of
Southborough Park northwards; the west has not lost all its tint over
the Ditton hollow; white flowers stand in the grass; white road, white
flint-heaps even, white clouds, and the stars, too, light without
colour.

By day the breeze comes south and west, free over fields, over corn and
grass and hedgerow; so slight a mound as this mere rise in the
river-side plain lifts you up into the current of the air. Where the
wind comes the sunlight is purer.

The sorrel is now high and ripening in the little meadows beside the
road just beyond the orchard. As it ripens the meadow becomes red, for
the stalks rise above the grass. This is the beginning of the feast of
seeds. The sorrel ripens just as the fledgelings are leaving the nest;
if you watch the meadow a minute you will see the birds go out to it,
now flying up a moment and then settling again. After a while comes the
feast of grain; then another feast of seeds among the stubble, and the
ample fields, and the furze of the hills; then berries, and then winter,
and the last seed.

A June rose. Something caught my eye on the top of the high hawthorn
hedge beside the Brighton road one evening as it was growing dusk, and
on looking again there was a spray of briar in flower, two roses in full
bloom and out of reach, and one spray of three growing buds. So it is
ever with the June rose. It is found unexpectedly, and when you are not
looking for it. It is a gift, not a discovery, or anything earned--a
gift like love and happiness. With ripening grasses the rose comes, and
the rose is summer: till then it is spring. On the green banks--waste
places--beside the "New Road" (Kingsdown Road formerly) the streaked
pink convolvulus is in flower; a sign that the spring forces have spent
themselves, that the sun is near his fulness. The flower itself is
shapely, yet it is not quite welcome; it says too plainly that we are
near the meridian. There are months of warmth to follow--brilliant
sunshine and new beauties; but the freshness, the joyous looking forward
of spring is gone. Upon these banks the first coltsfoot flowers in
March, the first convolvulus in summer, and almost the last hawkweed in
autumn. A yellow vetchling, too, is now opening i