s theirs! Heavy moths
burring at the edge of the copse; green, and red, and gold flies: gnats,
like smoke, around the tree-tops; midges so thick over the brook, as if
you could haul a netful; tiny leaping creatures in the grass; bronze
beetles across the path; blue dragonflies pondering on cool leaves of
water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from elm to
elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into
the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on
the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a
starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-like, up a green fern frond.
Finches undulating through the air, shooting themselves with closed
wings, and linnets happy with their young.

Golden dandelion discs--gold and orange--of a hue more beautiful, I
think, than the higher and more visible buttercup. A blackbird,
gleaming, so black is he, splashing in the runlet of water across the
gateway. A ruddy kingfisher swiftly drawing himself, as you might draw a
stroke with a pencil, over the surface of the yellow buttercups, and away
above the hedge. Hart's-tongue fern, thick with green, so green as to be
thick with its colour, deep in the ditch under the shady hazel boughs.
White meadow-sweet lifting its tiny florets, and black-flowered sedges.
You must push through the reed grass to find the sword-flags; the stout
willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but resist the foot like
underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little
black moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother, who has
dived under the water-grass, and broken the smooth surface of the
duckweed. Yellow loosestrife is rising, thick comfrey stands at the very
edge; the sandpipers run where the shore is free from bushes. Back by
the underwood the prickly and repellent brambles will presently present
us with fruit. For the squirrels the nuts are forming, green beechmast
is there--green wedges under the spray; up in the oaks the small knots,
like bark rolled up in a dot, will be acorns. Purple vetches along the
mounds, yellow lotus where the grass is shorter, and orchis succeeds to
orchis. As I write them, so these things come--not set in gradation, but
like the broadcast flowers in the mowing-grass.

Now follows the gorse, and the pink rest-harrow, and the sweet lady's
bedstraw, set as it were in the midst of a little thorn-bush. The broad