The Heart of England/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
AUGUST
I have found only two satisfying places in the world in August—the Bodleian Library and a little reedy, willowy pond, where you may enjoy the month perfectly, sitting and being friendly with moorhen and kingfisher and snake, except in the slowly recurring intervals when you catch a tench and cast only mildly envious eyes upon its cool, olive sides. Through the willows I see the hot air quiver in crystal ripples like the points of swords, and sometimes I see a crimson cyclist on a gate. Thus is "fantastic summer's heat" divine. For in August it is right to be cool and at the same time to enjoy the sight and perfume of heat out of doors. In June and July the frosts and east winds of May are so near in memory that they give a satisfaction to the sensation of heat. In September frosts and east winds return. August, in short, is the month of Nature's perfect poise, and I should like to see it represented in painting by a Junonian woman, immobile, passionless and happy in a cool-leaved wood, and looking neither forward nor backward, but within.
Far off I see a forest-covered hill that says "Peace" with a great, quiet voice. From the pool and towards the hill runs a shining road, with some of its curves visible for miles, which I have not followed and dare not follow, because it seems to lead to the Happy Fields.
Between the pool and the road is a house built squarely of white stone. A tiled roof, where the light is always mellow as sunset in the various hues that sometimes mix and make old gold, slopes from the many-angled chimneys and juts out beyond and below the wall of the house. In that shadowy pocket of the eaves the martins build, and on a day of diamond air their shadows are as rivulets upon the white wall. Four large windows frame a cool and velvety and impenetrable gloom. Between them stand four still cypresses.
A footpath skirts the pool, and on one side tall grasses rise up, on the other thorns and still more grasses, heavy with flowers and the weight of birds. The grasses almost meet across the path, and a little way ahead mix in a mist through which the white-throat and the dragon fly climb or descend continually. The little green worlds below the meeting grasses are full of the music of bright insects and the glow of flowers. The long stems ascend in the most perfect grace; pale green, cool, and pleasant to the touch, stately and apparently full of strength, with a certain benignity of shape that is pleasant to the eye and mind. Branched, feathered, and tufted heads of flower top the tall grass, and in the clear air each filament divides itself from the rest as the locks of the river-moss divide on the water's flow. All bend in trembling curves with their own fulness, and the butterflies crown them from time to time. When wind plays with the perfectly level surface of the grasses their colours close in and part and knit arabesques in the path of the light sand martins. Sometimes the mailed insects creep along the pennons of the grass leaves to sun themselves, other insects visit the forget-me-nots in the pool. Every plant has its miniature dryad.
Nearer, and sometimes in the water, the branched meadow-sweet mingles the foam of its blossom and the profuse verdure of its leaves with willow herb, blue brooklime, white cresses, and the dark purple figwort. A mellow red, like that of autumn oaks or hawthorn at the first touch of spring, tinges the meadow-sweet. The disposition of its flowers is so exquisite that they seem to have been moulded to the shape of some delicate hand; every bud takes part in the effect. The lithe meanders of the stems are contrasted with the intricacy of the goose-grass and the contortion of the forget-me-nots. Both in the midst of the long stalk and in the plume of flowers the branching is so fine and the curves rely so intimately upon one another that a simple copy on paper is cool and pensive after the vanity of cultivated curiousness. Hardly anywhere is there a visible shadow; at most there is a strange tempering of pure light that throws a delicate bloom upon the cattle and the birds, and a kind of seriousness upon the face or flower within its influence. A dark insect of clear wings alights upon the new hawkweed flower, and sits probing deliciously in its deep heart; but, although the petals are in the midst of grasses and under thorns, the fly perches unshadowed, and throws no shade beyond a moistening of the flower's gold. The close purple flowers of the vetches are scarcely duller in the recesses, where the plant begins to climb, than at the summit where the buds bear a fine down. The fish gleam deep in the pool. The dark ivy shines in the innermost parts of the wood.
But these are merely the things that I see beside the pool, and here, more than anywhere else, the things that are seen are the least important. For they are but the fragments of the things that are embroidered on the hem of a great garment, which gathers the clouds and mountains in its folds; and in the hair of the wearer hang the stars, braided and whorled in patterns too intricate for our eyes. The Junonian woman is a little ivory image of the figure which I think of by the pool. She is older than the pool and the craggy oak at its edge, as old as the stars. But to-day she has taken upon herself the likeness of one who is a girl for lightness and joy, a woman for wisdom, a goddess for calm. Last month she seemed to laugh and dance. Next month she will seem to have grey in her hair. To-day she is perfect.