BITS FROM BOOKS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 180, 14 July 1928, Page 9

BITS FROM BOOKS

YEAR B YYEAR.

I do not want change: I want the same old and Joved things, the sanje wild flowers, the same trees and soft ash-green; the turtle-doves, the blackbirds, the coloured yellowhammer sing—sing—singing, so long as there is light to cast a shadow on the dial, for such is the measure of his song, and I want them in the same place. Let me fiind them morning after morning, the starrywhite petals radiating, striving upwards to their ideal. Let me see the idle shadows resting on the white dust; let me hear the bumble-bees, and stay to look down on the rich dandelion disk. Let me see the very thistles opening their great crowns — I should miss the thistles; the reedgrasses hiding the moor-hen; the bryony vine, at first crudely ambitious and lifted by force of youthful sap straight above the hedgerow to sink of its own weight presently and progress with crafty tendrils; swifts shot through the air with outstretched wings like crescent-headed shaftless arrows darted from the clouds; the chaffinch with a feather in her hill; all the living staircase of the spring, step by step, upwards to the great gallery of the summer—let me watch the same succession year by vear.—Richard Jeffries, in “The Pageant of Summer.”