THE GOLDEN AGE
of the field, the pant and smoke of a distant train—all were wine—or song, was it? or odour, this unity they all blent into? I had no words then to describe it, that earth-effluence of which I was so conscious; nor, indeed, have I found words since. I ran sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into the squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a stick; I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense—irresponsible babble; the tune was an improvisation, a weary, unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and yet it seemed to me a genuine utterance, and just at that moment the one thing fitting and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected it with scorn. Nature, everywhere singing in the same key, recognised and accepted it without a flicker of dissent.
All the time the hearty wind was calling to me companionably from where he swung and bellowed in the tree-tops. 'Take me for guide to-day,' he seemed to plead. 'Other holidays you have tramped it in the track of the stolid,
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