Greene Ferne Farm. Richard Jefferies

Baa—baa! A long-drawn pettish bleating that sometimes sounded absurdly like the “Ma—ma!” of a spoilt child. The lambs gambolled in the genial sunshine over the daisies; the ewes, arrived at the age of common sense, fed steadily on the young sweet grass, and did not notice the flowers.

Geoffrey Newton looked at them from the other side of the hedge, where indeed he had no business to be. He had carelessly wandered in a day-dream from the footpath, and was now in the midst of mowing-grass, to walk in which is against the unwritten laws of country life, because when trampled down it is difficult to mow. Yet there is a great pleasure in pushing through it, tall grasses and bennets and sorrel stems reaching to the knee—the very dogs delight in it. See a spaniel just let loose; how he circles round, plunging over it!—visible as he bounds up, lost to sight next moment in the matted mass; the higher it is the more he likes it.

Baa—maa!

“For how many thousand years have the lambs been happy in the spring-tide?” thought Geoffrey. “And yet it is said that the world is growing old! Nature is always young. Earth was never younger than she is to-day. Goethe was right there:”

Thy works sublime are now as bright

As on creation’s day they rose.

“If we could only somehow translate that eternal youth into our own lives—if! The dew still lingers here in the shade. How slumberous it is even in the morning! Unseen lotos-flowers bloom in the spring, and the odour makes us drowsy.”

His eyelids fell as he walked on, and his slow steps led him whither they would.

When a thoughtful man feels an overpowering love—a great passion rising within him—his ideal often becomes a kind of judge. All the creed of life that has grown up in the mind is passed in review: will the half-formed scepticism, the firm dogma, the theory, stand before the new light thrown upon them by the love that is in itself a faith?

So he dreamed of Margaret, and saw and did not see the beauty around him. His feet, sinking into the soft green carpet, were dusted over with the yellow pollen of the buttercups. The young shoot of the bramble projecting from the bush caught at his sleeve; but the weak tender prickles, not yet hardened into thorns, gave way, and did not hold. Slender oval leaves on a drooping willow-bough lightly brushed without awaking him. The thrush on her nest sat still, seeing with the intuition of a wild creature that no harm threatened her. Finches sang on the boughs above, and scarcely moved as he passed under.

“Crake—crake!” from the thickest of the grass where the bird crept concealed. Butterflies fluttered from flower to flower in their curious sidelong way. Every branch and bush and blade of grass—the air above where the swallow floated, the furrow in the earth where the mice ran—all instinct with life; the glamour of the sunshine filling the field with a magic spell.

A little brook slipped away without a sound past the tall green rushes and the water-plantains and the grey chequered grass that lifts its spear-like points in moist places; a swift shallow streamlet winding through the meadow, its clear surface almost flush with the sward. Now running water draws a dreamer; so he followed it across the mead, past the footpath and the stepping-stone that had sunk into the stream: past the dark-green bunches of the marsh marigolds, whose broad golden petals open under the harsh winds of early spring, and not far from the peewit’s nest; for she rose and flew round him, calling plaintively, her pure white breast almost within reach, till finding that her treasure was unheeded, she slowly dropped behind: past the dog-violets, blue but not sweet, that looked up more boldly than their forerunners, whose modest heads had scarce appeared above the dead leaves on the bank. Yonder the roan cattle were feeding; and in the midst stood an ancient, gnarled, and many-twisted hawthorn, whose bark had become as iron under the fierce heats and fiercer storms of years; yet its branches were green, and crowned with the may—white virgin may-bloom scenting the air—and under its shadow a young heifer meditated. Past hollow willows, till presently the turf beneath grew soft and yielding as velvet, his foot sinking into the pile of the moss, and the shade of trees fell on him, where the bank of the brook became steep, and low down in its bed it rushed into the wood.

After awhile oak and elm gave place to black and gloomy firs that hung over and darkened the water. Large flecks of grey lichen clung to them, and from above a red squirrel peered down. Here the thick branches forced his steps aside from the stream, and out among the ashpoles where the wood-pigeons built their nests, and: in the strength of their love looked down upon him fearlessly from their feeble platforms of twigs. Under an ash-stole he saw a rare plant growing, and stooped and went on his knees to reach it, and so pushed aside the thick boughs, and, as it were, looked through a screen, and his heart gave a great bound.

There was a narrow space clear of wood, where a green footpath little used went by, and a large, gnarled, crooked-grown ash-stole opposite, forming a natural arm-chair, well lined with soft dry moss, and canopied overhead with leafy branches, drooping woodbine, and climbing briar, whose roses would soon bloom. The brake fern, young yet and tender, rose up and gave itself for her footstool—for Margaret sat there, leaning back luxuriously in her woodland throne. He thought she must have heard the rustling of the boughs he had parted, and kept still as an Indian hunter, holding his breath for fear lest she should see him thus spying. A minute passed, and there was no motion; then he saw that her right arm hung down listlessly—that the head leaned a little to one side, the face rather away from him—that her hat had evidently dropped from her hand, and an open book had fallen at her feet. She was slumbering.

His chest pressed on the green fern, bluebells hung over his feet.

“Coo-coo-oo!” the dove with burnished neck called gently to his mate, sitting on the ivied tree.

“Jug-jug-jug!” sang the nightingale hard by in the hawthorn—the nightingale that by night is sad, but whose

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