willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but resist the foot like
underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little black
moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother, who has dived
under the water-grass, and broken the smooth surface of the duckweed.
Yellow loosestrife is rising, thick comfrey stands at the very edge; the
sandpipers run where the shore is free from bushes. Back by the underwood
the prickly and repellent brambles will presently present us with fruit.
For the squirrels the nuts are forming, green beechmast is there--green
wedges under the spray; up in the oaks the small knots, like bark rolled
up in a dot, will be acorns. Purple vetches along the mounds, yellow
lotus where the grass is shorter, and orchis succeeds to orchis. As I
write them, so these things come--not set in gradation, but like the
broadcast flowers in the mowing-grass.

Now follows the gorse, and the pink rest-harrow, and the sweet
lady's-bedstraw, set as it were in the midst of a little thorn-bush. The
broad repetition of the yellow clover is not to be written; acre upon
acre, and not one spot of green, as if all the green had been planed
away, leaving only the flowers to which the bees come by the thousand
from far and near. But one white campion stands in the midst of the lake
of yellow. The field is scented as though a hundred hives of honey had
been emptied on it. Along the mound by it the bluebells are seeding, the
hedge has been cut and the ground is strewn with twigs. Among those
seeding bluebells and dry twigs and mosses I think a titlark has his
nest, as he stays all day there and in the oak over. The pale clear
yellow of charlock, sharp and clear, promises the finches bushels of seed
for their young. Under the scarlet of the poppies the larks run, and then
for change of colour soar into the blue. Creamy honeysuckle on the hedge
around the cornfield, buds of wild rose everywhere, but no sweet petal
yet. Yonder, where the wheat can climb no higher up the slope, are the