Below the mill, to the south, is a land of tall trees standing in conclaves of woods, in whispering groups, or solitary, each in its sovereignty of shade and shining grass; of apple orchards and farmhouses that lie, amidst their haystacks and ricks of straw, in gulfs among the trees; and here and there the yellow skeleton of an oak, encircled by its bark and twigs in piles, thrusts its sharp appealing lines through the neighbouring green.
There is the tall, stony beech, its bole as fair as human shoulders and flanks, lighted and shadowed changefully, its topmost branches curving over as if with the weight of birds alighting, and doves and wood-wrens among the leaves; the twisted birch’s misty, moving foliage as of a pensive fountain; the oak, whose dark branches only yesterday were interwoven like the flight of many bats at twilight, now an enchanted hill of glowing bronze; the straight, lean, athletic ash, like a young prince in short hunting tunic; the calm, feminine sycamore whose fresh foliage hangs in folds as of smoke; the pollard willow, along the stream, an ancient, neglected, grotesque deity, reluctantly assuming its green garlands for yet another spring.
These things and many more the eye sees delightedly, and having ranged, finds its chief joy in some narrow tract of the large land, like the first field below the mill.
It is but an acre or two of sweet, undulating pasture, bounded on two sides by tall hawthorn hedges, on the third by an ash copse, on the other by an orchard of apple trees. The grass is pure green, revealing here and there a purple orchis or dog violet or blue self-heal, except where the crystal brook rushes through it and gathers white and gold about its banks. Here no shadow falls, or if it does the dew and blossoms break it up. The leaning and interwoven apple trees make a white and wine-filled sky by their dense clots of bloom. The swallows embroider the air with their songs and their blue flight. A farmhouse walls are dusky red between the trunks. Overhead, the dim blue sky lets a white cloud roll out at intervals like lilies from a pool. And the blackbird perfects his song indolently; the thrush thinks clearly, sharply aloud, with nothing long drawn out; and the willow wren happily complains for ever--a voice that has wings and must revolve continually through the land to express for one or another the vague pains or pleasures of spring day.