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“Consider the work of God.”
We have passed, from late Spring into Summer. Let us go out into the
balmy air and mark what changes have passed over the land since we had
our Spring scamper among the fields. It will befit these graver months
of the year soberly to walk now. And a quiet sauntering walk over the
fields is in truth a delightful thing upon a Summer’s day.
How delicious to thread the narrow parting through the deep hay, just
ready to be cut, meadow after meadow full of tall, silky, waving
grass; here a patch feathery, and of silvery lilac hue; here the
rough crowfoot; here the drooping oat-grass; here trembling, delicate
pyramids; here miniature bulrushes; and, choice and rare, the graceful
quaking grass, with its thin filaments, and its fruit shot with faint
purple, and pale green, and light brown. Numberless flowers,--gold,
and rose, and crimson, and lilac, and amethyst,--these smile up at you
close to the path, and give a sweet hint of stronger colour, far away
throughout the hues and many unpronounced tints of the grass.
You spring over a stile, and, sweet surprise! come upon a field
half-mown. It is the first you have seen this year,--the first deep
ranks of close tall growth falling before the scythe,--the first scent
of hay; and the first waft of this is to the scent what the first
note of the cuckoo is to the ear. There the deep swathes lie in long
rows, the innocent sweet flowers looking up at first with something
of sad wonder, but soon drooping in a death which shall not be called
untimely, because it is useful, and following on completed work. Of
it we may say with the wise king, that “being made perfect in a short
time, it fulfilled a long time.” And, like a loved memory after a holy
death, the scent of the dying grass and flowers lingers sweetly in the
soft air.
Well, we surmount another stile, and enter a wheat-field. How beautiful
the myriad stalks and the broad drooping leaves, of a more sober bluer
green than that of grass! I always notice that as soon as the hay is
made, or making, the full bulging sheaths of the wheat begin to open,
and to divulge the secret wealth of the green ear. The pointed flag
falls over it; but very soon it bursts the swaddling bands, and rises
proudly above the now obsequious deposed leaves, like an heir above his
nurses. And then the whole wheat-field stands in blossom, the little
trembling stamens escaping all over the husks, and the great width of
tall ears begins its solemn stately waving and bending, and its undying
whisper in the faint warm Summer airs.
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And through the long colonnades there are here also sweet and
fair flowers: the bright pimpernel, the dull-grey cud-weed, the glad
speedwell, the small blue forget-me-not, the white feverfew,--these
are the low carpet growth. Then higher, and like illuminations hung
through the columns, there is the rich blue corn-flower, and the purple
corn-cockle in its green star-shaped cup; and last in order, but almost
first in beauty, the glorious scarlet poppy, with its satin-black
eye,--a flower of dazzling splendour, but calumniated and ill-used
beyond my endurance. “Flaunting poppies,” indeed! Why, they are the
drooping banners of God’s army of the corn! Here they are waving out
in all their glory; here they are folded up (somewhat crumpled) within
that green case, out of which they are gleaming, just ready to be
unfurled for the march. I love the violet--none better; but I protest
against the folly, and, in a minor degree, injustice, of instituting
an inane comparison between it and the poppy, to the discredit of
my favourite of the corn-fields. A better lesson might be taught by
pointing out how each fulfils the duties of that state to which it
has pleased God to call it: the sweet violet among its leaves, like
the modest wife at home; the brave poppy among the open and wealthy
corn-fields, like the husband called out into the business of the
thronged world.
This is a digression, however. Let us get back to Summer days, and the
fallen grass, and the wide wheat-fields in flower.
Many days have not passed before that flower falls, and the delicate
paleness of the new-born ear passes away, and the corn-fields settle
down to the grave work of the year.
“Long grass swaying in the playing of the almost wearied breeze;
Flowers bowed beneath a crowd of the tawny-armoured bees;
Sumptuous forests, filled with twilight, like a dreamy old romance;
Rivers falling, rivers calling, in their indolent advance.”
That was all very well in the year’s early manhood, scarcely
distinguishable from youth. But a more prosaic gravity has toned down
those romantic feelings, and it has discovered that there is work,
grave work--work sometimes a little wearisome and dull--to be done. The
fairy lightness and greenness, the delicacy and exquisite freshness,
of the year, have passed away. It is not Dream-land any longer--not a
scene of faint rose-flushed or dazzling white blossom, but of hushed,
sober colour, and of somewhat of monotony and sameness. The fair Bride
fruit-trees are clad in dark garments now, and busy with their families
of little unripe things, that have to be educated into ripeness and
usefulness. The oaks are no more clad in “glad light green” or very
red leaves, and the elms have toned down even the little brightening
up of Summer growth at the end of their branches, all into that quiet,
dust-dulled, dark hue. And so with all the trees; and under the
tall growth of the copses there is not the play and dance of myriad
butterflies of sunlight in soft meadows of shade; but the shadow is
almost gloomy, and the stillness is quite solemn. Thin tall grass or
broad grave ferns have taken the place of the sheets of glad primroses,
and bright wood anemones, and azure hyacinths, and rich orchis.
There is no disguising it: the freshness and first energy of things has
spent itself and gone, the landscape is dulled and dustied. A little
while ago every day was different; now every day seems much the same.
There is not the constant progression, the still developing beauty, the
ever new delights of every new day. New birds to greet, new clothing
for the meadows, new carpets for the woods, new glories for the trees:
all these
“Faded in the distance, where the thickening leaves were piled.”
And the year has done with its extravagantly profuse promises, its
eager pressing on to some ideal and impossible beauty not yet attained,
never to be attained, though it would not believe this, in those old
inexperienced days, when it cast away blossom and freshness of leaf as
things that did but impede it, in the impatience of its hurry after
that Perfection which is a dream on earth, though it be true in Heaven.
True also in Him, in whom earth and Heaven have met; this stooping to
the tangible, and that raised to the sublime.
Yes, the year seems at a standstill now, and sobered down, and
sedate, and hushed. Above all, it is silent. Those ecstatic melodies,
those “pæans clear,” that rang out through the groves--the song
of the willow-wren, the thrush, the blackbird, the blackcap, the
nightingale--all are silent. Even the little robin has no voice for
Summer days; only the yellow-hammer reiterates its short, plaintive,
monotonous note on the dusty wayside hedge.
“Dear is the morning gale of Spring,
And dear th’ autumnal eve;
But few delights can Summer bring
A poet’s crown to weave.
“Her bowers are mute, her fountains dry,
And ever Fancy’s wing
Speeds from beneath her cloudless sky
To Autumn or to Spring.
“Sweet is the infant’s waking smile,
And sweet the old man’s rest;
But middle age by no fond wile,
No soothing calm is blest.”
Sweet Summer days! I am far from meaning to depreciate you, or to
deny to you the need of much beauty and calm delight; but it is true,
nevertheless, and must be conceded, that the poet’s complaint has some
ground of reason. We miss something in Summer days: it must ever be
so in this world. Attainment must ever disappoint: reality is another
thing from the image of our dreams. The finished painting is not all
that the first rough sketch hinted and shadowed out. Spring may be
high-spirited and eager--Summer must ever be grave, and hushed, and
sedate.
And what then? Something is missed: but is nothing found? What is the
year doing in the gravity, and monotony, and silence of Summer days?
Our life is much like that of the year. It has its Spring and its
Summer, its Autumn and its Winter. We, too, pass out of youth, and
excitement, and impetuosity, and hope, into manhood, and gravity, and
calmness--and disappointment. What, then, is the year doing in this
stage of its life? If we look aside from our own experience to its
example, what does that example teach us?
The question, “What is the year doing?” suggests the answer to our
inquiries. The year _is doing_. It is gravely, quietly, perseveringly
_at work_. And earnest, hearty, steady work at that which God has
given us to do--work hearty, if a little dull and monotonous--this is
the lesson taught by Summer days.
Work, steady work, dry, monotonous work, aye, this is the lesson of
Life’s Summer; this succeeds its dream-time, this precedes its rest.
Yes, in truth, the Spring anticipation and eager energy have gone. The
Autumn repose has not yet come. The year is gravely, and steadily,
and prosaically at work now; its ardour and ecstasies calmed, its
wild impossible hopes toned down, its grace of blossom vanished. All
vegetation is busy, maturing seed and fruit, sober grain and useful
hay. The earth, like her child, the ant,
“Provideth her meat in the summer,
And gathereth her food in the harvest.”
Toiling in the dust and heat; toiling without rest, wearily often,
uncheered by songs. For the little choristers of the trees are
themselves grave and sedate now, and busied with their nests, and
with the care of rearing their family. There is little change, save
a deepening of colour; the morning finds the earth still ceaselessly
at work, and in the tender evenings and grey nights, the glimpsing
lightnings and the intent stars disclose or behold the same scene:
“Rapid, rosy-tinted lightnings, where the rocky clouds are riven,
Like the lifting of a veil before the inner courts of heaven:
Silver stars in azure evenings, slowly climbing up the steep”: