What man among us all, if he will think the matter over calmly and
fairly, can honestly say that there is any spot on the earth’s surface
in which he has enjoyed so much real, wholesome, happy life as in a
hay field? He may have won on horseback or on foot at the sports and
pastimes in which Englishmen glory; he may have shaken off all rivals,
time after time, across the vales of Aylesbury, or of Berks, or any
other of our famous hunting counties; he may have stalked the oldest
and shyest buck in Scotch forests, and killed the biggest salmon of
the year in the Tweed, and trout in the Thames; he may have made
topping averages in first-rate matches of cricket; or have made long
and perilous marches, dear to memory, over boggy moor, or mountain,
or glacier; he may have successfully attended many breakfast-parties
within drive of Mayfair, on velvet lawns, surrounded by all the
fairy-land of pomp, and beauty, and luxury, which London can pour out;
his voice may have sounded over hushed audiences at St. Stephens or in
the law-courts; or he may have had good times in any other scenes of
pleasure or triumph open to Englishmen; but I much doubt whether, on
putting his recollections fairly and quietly together he would not say
at last that the fresh-mown hay-field is the place where he has spent
the most hours which he would like to live over again, the fewest which
he would wish to forget.
As children, we stumble about the new-mown hay, revelling in the many
colors of the prostrate grass and wild flowers, and in the power of
tumbling where we please without hurting ourselves; as small boys, we
pelt one another, and the village school-girls, and our nurse-maids,
and young lady cousins with the hay, till, hot and weary, we retire to
tea or syllabub beneath the shade of some great oak or elm standing up
like a monarch out of the fair pasture; or, following the mowers, we
rush with eagerness on the treasures disclosed by the scythe stroke—the
nest of the unhappy late-laying titlark, or careless field-mouse; as
big boys, we toil ambitiously with the spare forks and rakes, or climb
into the wagons and receive with open arms the delicious load as it is
pitched up from below, and rises higher and higher as we pass along
the long lines of haycocks: a year or two later we are strolling there
with our first sweethearts, our souls and tongues loaded with sweet
thoughts, and soft speeches; we take a turn with the scythe as the
bronzed mosses lie in the shade for their short rest, and willingly
pay our footing for the feat. Again, we come back with book in pocket,
and our own children tumbling about us as we did before them; now
romping with them, and smothering them with the sweet-smelling load—now
musing and reading and dozing away the delicious summer evenings. And
so shall we not come back to the end, enjoying as grandfathers the
love-making and the rompings of younger generations yet?
Were any of us ever really disappointed or melancholy in a hay-field?
Did we ever lie fairly back on a hay-cock and look up into the blue
sky, and listen to the merry sounds, the whetting of scythes, and the
laughing prattle of women and children, and think evil thoughts of the
world or our brethren? Not we! or, if we have so done, we ought to be
ashamed of ourselves, and deserve never to be out of town again during
hay-harvest.
There is something in the sights and sounds of a hay-field which seems
to touch the same chord in one as Lowell’s lines in the “Lay of Sir
Launfal,” which end:
“For a cap and a bell our lives we pay,
We wear out our lives with toiling and tasking;
It is only Heaven that is given away;
It is only God may be had for the asking.”
But the philosophy of the hay-field remains to be written. Let us hope
that whoever takes the subject in hand will not dissipate all its
sweetness in the process of the inquiry wherein the charm lies.