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.