As soon as you get inside the belt of wood, and begin to go down to the
pond, the damp, and the dusk, and the scent of the dead leaves make you
feel as if you were in a very old church. Plenty of wake-robin also
grows in the wood, with its leaves like spotted spearheads, and its
stumpy red and purple pencils wrapped up in faded green satin (“lords
and ladies,” I think we used to call them when I was a youngster). The
sweet flag grows all about the pond, and in it too. The corn-flag
brightens up its banks with great yellow flowers; and the iris nods its
purple blossoms on them, looking a great deal nicer than it smells. Big
tangled sheaves of bright green forget-me-not, dotted with tiny stars of
blue and gold, bulge over and into, and straggle along, the water. A
great part of the pond is choked and carpeted with crow-silk and
water-flannel, and moor-ball, spangled with glassy air-bubbles and
bright-backed little beetles. White water-lilies, and yellow
water-lilies spread a splendid service of china and gold on glossy green
table-cloths, for the water-fairies to take supper off by moonlight; and
yet, for all that, the great pond is a melancholy place. Big fish mope
motionless in its corners, as if they had something on their minds.
Little fish leap through its duck-weed, almost covered with the green
scum, not as if they did it for the fun of the jump and splash, but to
keep for a moment out of the jaws of the shark-like pike that is waiting
for them. The pond’s great pike—it has only one, according to village
report—is said to have dragged into its waters a dog that came to lap
them. No one ever bathes in the pond. Steel-blue dragon-flies zig-zag
over the water on their gauzy wings, and two or three kingfishers flash
backwards and forwards across it like streaks of variegated
lightning.—_Anon._