A Writer's Notebook (17 page)

After the rain, in the evening, the birds broke into such a joyous chant that it seemed impossible that it was a world of sorrow. Hidden among the leaves, aloft in the beeches, the starling sang with full-throated melody; and the bullfinch and the thrush. From a distant meadow a cuckoo called with endless repetition, and far away, like an echo, a second cuckoo called back.

The Green Park in Winter.

The snow fell lightly as the footsteps of children. The snow lay masking the trim pathways, shrouding the trodden grass, the snow as far as one could see, on the housetops, on the trees. The sky was low, heavy with the cruel cold, and the light was grey and dim. In a long line gleamed the round lamps, and entangled with the leafless trees was a violet mist, and it trailed along the ground like the train of the winter night. The piercing cold had killed the other colours, but the mist was violet, exquisitely soft, but cold, cold so that the weary heart could scarcely endure its anguish. The houses of Carlton House Terrace were dark menacing masses against the whiteness of the snow. The day dwindled away in a ghostly silence, and there was no glimpse even of the setting sun. The grey sky grew darker, and the lights gleamed more brightly, surrounded each one by a pale aureole.

London. The western clouds of the sunset were like the vast wing of an archangel, flying through the void on an errand of vengeance; and the fiery shadow cast a lurid light upon the city.

The buttercups were spread over the green meadow like a cloth of gold, a carpet for the king's son Fleur-de-Lys, and Jonquil the white-limbed shepherd's boy

Over the trees, entangled in the naked branches, floated the thin black clouds like the rags of some ample sinuous garment.

The thin black clouds dragged themselves through the tree tops, tearing raggedly among the naked branches.

The aerial, oceanic petrel.

The dark immovable clouds were piled upon one another in giant masses, so distinct and sharply cut, so rounded, that one almost saw the impression of the fingers of a titanic sculptor.

There was a clump of tall fir trees, dark and ragged, their sombre green veiled in a silver mist, as though the hoar-frost of a hundred winters had endured into the summer as a chill vapour. In front of them, at the edge of the hill up which in serried hundreds climbed the pine trees, stood here and there an oak just bursting into leaf, clothed with its new-born verdure like the bride of a young god. And the everlasting youth of the oak trees contrasted, like day and night, with the undying age of the fir.

The fir trees were like the forest of life, that grey and sombre labyrinth where wandered the poet of Hell and Death.

The fields were fresh with the tall young grass of spring, the buttercups flaunted themselves gaily, careless of the pitiless night, and rejoiced in the sunshine as before they had rejoiced in the enlivening rain. The pleasant raindrops still lingered on
the daisies. The feathery ball of the dandelion, carried away by the breeze, floated past, a symbol of the life of man, an aimless thing, yielding to every breath, useless and with no mission but to spread its seed upon the fertile earth, so that things like unto it should spring up in the succeeding summer and flower, uncared for, and reproduce themselves and die.

I didn't know then how succulent a salad can be made of this humble herb
.

The hawthorn hedges, well-trimmed and flourishing, were putting out their tiny buds, and here and there, already in full flower, bloomed the wild rose.

At sunset over the slate-grey of the western clouds was spread a fiery vapour, a rain of infinitesimal tenuity, a great dust of gold that swept down upon the silent sea like the train of a goddess of fire; and presently, thrusting through the sombre wall of cloud like a titan bursting the walls of his prison, the sun shone forth, a giant ball of copper. With almost a material effort, it seemed, it pushed aside the obstructing clouds, filling the whole sky with brilliancy; and then over the placid sea was stretched a broad roadway of flame upon which might travel the passionate souls of men, endlessly, to the source of deathless light.

The clouds hung over the valley pregnant with rain; and it gave a singular feeling of discomfort to see them laden with water and yet still painfully holding it up.