As I turned into the lane that climbs the hillside to the cottage under the
high beech woods I was conscious of a sort of mild expectation that I could
not explain. It was late evening. Venus, who looks down with such calm
splendour upon this troubled earth in these summer nights, had disappeared,
but the moon had not yet risen. The air was heavy with those rich odours
which seem so much more pungent by night than by day--those odours of
summer eves that Keats has fixed for ever in the imagination:--
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet.
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs;
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn....
Ah, that was it. I remembered now. A fortnight ago, when I last came up
this lane by night, it was the flash of the white hawthorn in the starlight
that burst upon me with such a sudden beauty. I knew the spot. It was just
beyond here, where the tall hedgerow leans over the grass side-track and
makes a green arbour by the wayside. I should come to it in a minute or
two, and catch once more that ecstasy of spring.
And when I reached the spot the white hawthorn had vanished. The arbour was
there, but its glory had faded. The two weeks I had spent in Fleet Street
had stripped it of its crown, and the whole pageant of the year must pass
before I could again experience that sudden delight of the hedgerows
bursting into foam. I do not mind confessing that I continued my way up the
lane with something less than my former exhilaration. Partly no doubt this
was due to the fact that the hill at this point begins its job of climbing
in earnest, and is a stiff pull at the end of a long day's work and a
tiresome journey--especially if you are carrying a bag.
But the real reason of the slight shadow that had fallen on my spirit was
the vanished hawthorn. Poor sentimentalist, you say, to cherish these idle
fancies in this stern world of blood and tears. Well, perhaps it is this
stern world of blood and tears that gives these idle fancies their
poignancy. Perhaps it is through those fancies that one feels the
transitoriness of other things. The coming and the parting in the round of
nature are so wonderfully mingled that we can never be quite sure whether
the joy of the one triumphs over the regret for the other. It is always
"Hail" and "Farewell" in one breath. I heard the cuckoo calling across the
meadows to-day, and already I noticed a faltering in his second note. Soon
the second note will be silent altogether, and the single call will sound
over the valley like the curfew bell of spring.
Who, I thought, would not fix these fleeting moments of beauty if he could?
Who would not keep the cuckoo's twin shout floating for ever over summer
fields and the blackbird for ever fluting his thanksgiving after summer
showers? Who can see the daffodils nodding their heads in sprightly dance
without sharing the mood of Herrick's immortal lament that that dance
should be so brief:--
Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd its noon.
Stay, stay.
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.
Yes, I think Herrick would have forgiven me for that momentary lapse into
regretfulness over the white hawthorn. He would have understood. You will
see that he understood if you will recall the second stanza, which, if you
are the person I take you for, you will do without needing to turn to a
book.
It is the same sense of the transience of beauty that inspired the "Ode to
a Grecian Urn" on which pastoral beauty was fixed in eternal rapture:--
Ah, happy, happy boughs I that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu.
And there we touch the paradox of this strange life. We would keep the
fleeting beauty of Nature, and yet we would not keep it. The thought of
those trees whose leaves are never shed, and of that eternal spring to
which we never bid adieu, is pleasant to toy with, but after all we would
not have it so. It is no more seriously tenable than the thought that
little Johnny there should remain for ever at the age of ten. You may feel
that you would like him to remain at the age of ten. Indeed you are a
strange parent if you do not look back a little wistfully to the childhood
of your children, and wish you could see them as you once saw them. But you
would not really have Johnny stick at ten. After five years of the
experience you would wish little Johnny dead. For life and its beauty are a
living thing, and not a pretty fancy sculptured on a Grecian urn.
And so with the pageant of Nature. If the pageant stopped, the wonder
itself would stop. I should have no sudden shock of delight at hearing the
first call of the cuckoo in spring or seeing my hawthorn hedge burst into
snowy blossoms. I should no longer remark the jolly clatter of the rooks in
the February trees which forms the prologue of spring, nor look out for the
coming of the first primrose or the arrival of the first swallow. I should
cease, it is true, to have the pangs of "Farewell," but I should cease also
to have the ecstasy of "Hail." I should have my Grecian urn, but I should
have lost the magic of the living world.
By the time I had reached the gate I had buried my regrets for the vanished
hawthorn. I knew that to-morrow I should find new miracles in the
hedgerows--the wild rose and the honeysuckle, and after them the
blackberries, and after these again the bright-hued hips and haws. And
though the cuckoo's note should fail him, there would remain the thrush,
and after the thrush that constant little fellow in the red waistcoat would
keep the song going through the dark winter days.