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THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES

THOUGHTS FROM
THE WRITINGS OF
RICHARD JEFFERIES

WORKS BY RICHARD JEFFERIES

THE STORY OF MY HEART: My Autobio-
graphy. With Portrait and New Preface by C. J.
Longman. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.

WOOD MAGIC: A Fable. With Frontispiece and
Vignette by E. V. B. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.

RED DEER. With 17 Illustrations by J. Charlton
and H. Tunaly. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.

THE TOILERS OF THE FIELD. With Por-
trait from the Bust in Salisbury Cathedral. Crown
8vo, 3s. 6d.

FIELD AND HEDGEROW : Last Essays. With
Portrait. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.

LONDON AND NEW YORK:
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.

T

HOUGHTS FROM
THE WRITINGS OF
RICHARD JEFFERIES

Selected by H. S. H. WAYLEN

LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN
AND CO., AND NEW YORK. 1895

PREFACE

FOR permission to indulge in one
of the greatest pleasures I have
known, I offer my best thanks
to Mrs. Jefferies, Messrs. Longmans,
Green & Co., Messrs. Chatto & Windus,
Messrs. Richard Bentley & Son, and
Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston & Co. ;
also the Editors of the following publi-
cations in which Jefferies' Essays first
appeared : The Fortnightly Review,
Manchester Guardian, Pall Mall
Gazette, Standard, English Illustrated
Magazine, Longman's Magazine, St.
James's Gazette, Art Journal, Chambers'
Journal, Magazine of Art, Century

1524'.

.a.

*f

w-$

PREFACE

Illustrated Magazine, Good Words, and
The Graphic.

I have found great difficulty in making
extracts from ' The Story of my Heart ' ;
in its extreme beauty and depth of
thought it should be taken as a whole,
nevertheless I have chosen a few, for I
think it is Jefferies' masterpiece.
It may be noticed that I have made no
selections from many of Jefferies' best
known books. It is from no lack of
appreciation, for I think they should
find a place in every library, but being
more especially natural and social
histories than nature thoughts they
seem less suited to a small volume of
this kind.

My first idea in making a selection of
'Jefferies' Thoughts' was to put them
together in a small notebook for my
own use, but it occurred to me that what
gave me pleasure might give pleasure
to others, and I therefore obtained leave

vi

PREFACE

to edit them. They are mere fragments
—gems taken from a mine— but if the
perusal of them induces others to study
the original works in their entirety,
which I sincerely hope, I shall feel that
my effort has not been in vain.

H. S. H. W.

Upper Parkstone,
23rd January 1895.

VH

ERRATA

Page 41, line i, for ' papyre ' read ' papyri.'
48, ,, 4, for ' ever ' read ' era.'
57, ,, 4, for 'grace' read ' Greece.'
66, „ S, for ' And ' read ' An.'
78, ,, 10, for ' wan ' read ' roan.'
99, last word, for ' truth ' read ' tenth.'
102, line 10, for ' some or ' read ' some spot or.'
102, ,, 3 from foot, for 'decision 'read 'derision.'
107, ,, 7 from foot, for ' To ' read ' Is.'

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS
OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

THE whole time in the open air,
resting at mid-day, under the
elms with the ripple of heat
flowing through the shadow; at mid-
night between the ripe corn and the
hawthorn hedge on the white wild
camomile and the poppy pale in the
duskiness, with face upturned to the
thoughtful heaven.

Consider the glory of it, the life above
this life to be obtained from constant
presence with the sunlight and the stars.
— 'The Open Air' i1 Golden-Brown.

i 'The Open Air': Chatto and Windus.
A

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

SO it has ever been to me, by day
or by night, summer or winter,
beneath the trees the heart feels
nearer to that depth of life the far sky
means. The rest of spirit found only in
beauty, ideal and pure, comes there be-
cause the distance seems within touch
of thought. To the heaven thought can
reach lifted by the strong arms of the
oak, carried up by the ascent of the
flame-shaped fir. — * The Open Air' : Wild
Flowers.

IF we had never before looked upon
the earth, but suddenly came to it
man or woman grown, set down in
the midst of a summer mead, would it
not seem to us a radiant vision ? The
hues, the shapes, the song and life of
birds, above all the sunlight, the breath
of heaven, resting on it ; the mind would
be filled with its glory, unable to grasp
it, hardly believing that such things

2

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES
could be mere matter and no more.
Like a dream of some spirit-land it
would appear, scarce fit to be touched
lest it should fall to pieces, too beautiful
to be long watched lest it should fade
away.

So it seemed to me as a boy, sweet
and new like this each morning ; and
even now, after the years that have
passed, and the lines they have worn in
the forehead, the summer mead shines
as bright and fresh as when my foot
first touched the grass. It has another
meaning now: the sunshine and the
flowers speak differently, for a heart
that has once known sorrow reads be-
hind the page, and sees sadness in joy.
But the freshness is still there, the
dew washed the colours before dawn.
Unconscious happiness in finding wild-
flowers— unconscious and unquestioning
and therefore unbounded.— 'The Open
Air': Wild-Flowers.

3

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

IN the mind all things are written
in pictures— there is no alphabeti-
cal combination of letters and
words ; all things are pictures and
symbols. The bird's-foot lotus is the
picture to me of sunshine and summer,
and of that summer in the heart which
is known only in youth, and then not
alone. No words could write that feel-
ing: the bird's-foot lotus writes it.—' The
Open Air ' : Wild- Flowers.

MEMORY, like the sun, paints
to me bright pictures of the
golden summer-time of lotus ;
I can see them, but how shall I fix them
for you? By no process can that be
accomplished. It is like a story that
cannot be told because he who knows
it is tongue-tied and dumb.—' The Open
Air': Wild-Flowers.

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

I WILL concentrate my mind on my
own little path of life, and steadily
gaze downwards. In vain. Who
can do so ? who can care alone for his
or her petty trifles of existence that has
once entered amongst the wild-flowers ?
How shall I shut out the sun ? Shall I
deny the constellations of the night ?
They are there ; the mystery is for ever
about us— the question, the hope, the
aspiration cannot be put out. So that
it is almost a pain not to be able to cease
observing and tracing the untraceable
maze of beauty.— 'The Open Air': Wild-
Flowers.

THE little brown wren finds her
way through the great thicket
of hawthorn. How does she
know her path, hidden by a thousand
thousand leaves ? Tangled and crushed
together by their own growth, a crown

5

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

of thorns hangs over the thrush's nest ;
thorns for the mother, hope for the
young. Is there a crown of thorns
over your heart? A spike has gone
deep enough into mine. — 'The Open
Air': Wild-Flowers.

TWO things can go through the
solid oak : the lightning of the
clouds that rends the iron
timber, the lightning of the spring—
the electricity of the sunbeams forcing
him to stretch forth and lengthen his
arms with joy.— 'The Open Air': Wild-
Flowers.

WHITE tent-walls of cloud—
a warm white, being full to
overflowing of sunshine —
stretched across from ash-top to ash-
top, a cloud-canvas roof, a tent-palace
of the delicious air. For of all things
there is none so sweet as sweet air— one

6

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

great flower it is, drawn round about,
over, and enclosing, like Aphrodite's
arms : as if the dome of the sky were
a bell flower drooping down over us, and
the magical essence of it filling all the
room of the earth. Sweetest of all
things is wild-flower air. Full of their
ideal the starry flowers strained upwards
on the bank, striving to keep above
the rude grasses that pushed by them :
genius has ever had such a struggle.
The plain road was made beautiful by
the many thoughts it gave. I came
every morning to stay by the starlit
bank.—' The Open Air ' : Wild-Flowers.

A LITTLE feather droops down-
wards to the ground — a swal-
low's feather fuller of miracle
than the Pentateuch — how shall that
feather be placed again in the breast
where it grew ? Nothing twice. Time
changes the places that knew us, and

7

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS
if we go back in after years, still even
then it is not the old spot; the gate
swings differently, new thatch has been
put on the old gables, the road has been
widened, and the sward the driven sheep
lingered on is gone. Who dares to think
then? For faces fade as flowers, and
there is no consolation.— ' The Open
Air': Wild-Flowers.

GIVE me the old road, the same
flowers — they were only stitch-
wort— the old succession of
days and garland, ever weaving into it
fresh wild-flowers from far and near.
Fetch them from distant mountains,
discover them on decaying walls, in
unsuspected corners; though never
seen before, still they are the same:
there has been a place in the heart wait-
ing for them. — 'The Open Air': Wild-
Flowers.

8

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

THE old brown sails and the nets,
the anchors and tarry ropes,
go straight to nature. You
do not care for nature now ? Well ! all
I can say is, you will have to go to
nature one day— when you die: you
will find nature very real then. I rede
you to recognise the sunlight and the
sea, the flowers and woods now. — 'The
Open Air' : Sunny Brighton.

A WILLOW-WREN still remem-
bered his love, and whispered
about it to the silent fir tops, as
in after days we turn over the pages of
letters, withered as leaves, and sigh.
So gentle, so low, so tender a song the
willow-wren sang that it could scarce
be known as the voice of a bird, but was
like that of some yet more delicate
creature with the heart of a woman.
—'The Open Air ' : The Pine Wood.

9

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

THE swallows bring us the sun-
beams on their wings from
Africa to fill the fields with
flowers. From the time of the arrival
of the first swallow the flowers take
heart; the few and scanty plants that
had braved the earlier cold are succeeded
by a constantly enlarging list, till the
banks and lanes are full of them. — ' The
Open Air ' : Nature on the Roof.

IT is a curious sight to see the
early harvest morn — all hushed
under the burning sun, a morn that
you know is full of life and meaning, yet
quiet as if a man's foot had never trodden
the land. Only the sun is there, rolling
on his endless way. — 'The Open Air':
One of the New Voters.

I AM simply describing the realities
of rural life behind the scenes.
The golden harvest is the first
scene ; the golden wheat, glorious under

10

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

the summer sun. Bright poppies flower
in its depths, and convolvulus climbs the
stalks. Butterflies float slowly over the
yellow surface as they might over a lake
of colour.

To linger by it, to visit it day by day,
at even to watch the sunset by it, and
see it pale under the changing light, is
a delight to the thoughtful mind. There
is so much in the wheat, there are books
of meditation in it, it is dear to the heart.
Behind these beautiful aspects comes
the reality of human labour — hours
upon hours of heat and strain; there
comes the reality of a rude life, and in the
end little enough of gain. The wheat is
beautiful, but human life is labour.— 'The
Open Air' : One of the New Voters.

IF only we could persuade ourselves
to remain quiescent when we are
happy ! If only we would remain
still in the arm-chair as the last curl of

II

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS
vapour rises from a cigar that has been
enjoyed ! If only we would sit still in
the shadow and not go indoors to write
that letter ! Let happiness alone. Stir
not an inch ; speak not a word : happi-
ness is a coy maiden— hold her hand
and be still.— 'The Open Air': The
Modern Thames.

STEPPING up the hill laboriously,
suddenly a lark starts into the
light and pours forth a rain of
unwearied notes overhead. With bright
light, and sunshine, and sunrise, and
blue skies, the bird is so associated in
the mind, that even to see him in the
frosty days of winter, at least assures us
that summer will certainly return. Ought
not winter, in allegorical designs, the
rather to be represented with such things
that might suggest hope than such as
convey a cold and grim despair? The
withered leaf, the snowflake, the hedging

12

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

bill that cuts and destroys, why these ?
Why not rather the dear larks for one ?
They fly in flocks, and amid the white
expanse of snow (in the south) their
pleasant twitter or call is heard as they
sweep along seeking some grassy spot
cleared by the wind. The lark, the bird
of the light, is there in the bitter short
days. Put the lark then for winter, a
sign of hope, a certainty of summer.
Put, too, the sheathed bud, for if you
search the hedge you will find the
buds there, on tree and bush, carefully
wrapped around with the case which
protects them as a cloak. Put, too, the
sharp needles of the green corn : let the
wind clear it of snow a little way, and
show that under cold clod and colder
snow the green thing pushes up, know-
ing that summer must come. Nothing
despairs but man. Set the sharp curve
of the white new moon in the sky : she is
white in true frost, and yellow a little if

13

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

it is devising a change. Set the new
moon as something that symbols an
increase. Set the shepherd's crook in
a corner as a token that the flocks are
already enlarged in number. The shep-
herd is the symbolic man of the hardest
winter-time. His work is never more
important than then. Those that only
roam the fields when they are pleasant
in May, see the lambs at play in the
meadow, and naturally think of lambs
and May flowers. But the lamb was
born in the adversity of snow. Or you
might set the morning star, for it burns
and burns and glitters in the winter
dawn, and throws forth beams like those
of metal consumed in oxygen. There is
nought that I know by comparison with
which I might indicate the glory of the
morning star, while yet the dark night
hides in the hollows. The lamb is born
in the fold. The morning star glitters
in the sky. The bud is alive in its

14

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

sheath ; the green corn under the snow ;
the lark twitters as he passes. Now
these to me are the allegory of winter. —
'The Open Air': Out of Doors in Feb-
ruary.

NATURE yields nothing to the
sybarite. The meadow glows
with buttercups in spring, the
hedges are green, the woods lovely ; but
these are not to be enjoyed in their full
significance unless you have traversed
the same places when bare, and have
watched the slow fulfilment of the
flowers.—' The Open Air ' : Out of Doors
in February.

PERHAPS if the country be taken
at large there is never a time
when there is not a flower of
some kind out, in this or that warm
southern nook. The sun never sets,
nor do the flowers ever die. There is

15

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

life always, even in the dry fir-cone that
looks so brown and sapless. — 'The
Open Air ' : Out of Doors in February.

BESIDE the moist clods the slen-
der flags arise filled with the
sweetness of the earth. Out of
the darkness under — that darkness
which knows no day save when the
ploughshare opens its chinks — they
have come to the light. To the light
they have brought a colour which will
attract the sunbeams from now till
harvest. They fall more pleasantly on
the corn, toned, as if they mingled with
it. Seldom do we realise that the world
is practically no thicker to us than the
print of our footsteps on the path. Upon
that surface we walk and act our comedy
of life, and what is beneath is nothing
to us. But it is out from that under-
world, from the dead and the unknown,
from the cold moist ground, that these

16

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

green blades have sprung. Yonder a
steam-plough pants up the hill, groan-
ing with its own strength, yet all that
strength and might of wheels, and piston,
and chains, cannot drag from the earth
one single blade like these. Force can-
not make it; it must grow— an easy
word to speak or write, in fact full of
potency.

It is this mystery of growth and life,
of beauty, and sweetness, and colour,
starting forth from the clods, that gives
the corn its power over me. Somehow I
identify myself with it ; I live again as I
see it. Year by year it is the same, and
when I see it I feel that I have once
more entered on a new life. And I think
the spring, with its green corn, its
violets, and hawthorn leaves, and in-
creasing song, grows yearly dearer and
more dear to this our ancient earth. So
many centuries have flown ! Now it is
the manner with all natural things to
b 17

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

gather as it were by smallest particles.
The merest grain of sand drifts unseen
into a crevice, and by and by another ;
after a while there is a heap ; a century,
and it is a mound, and then every one
observes and comments on it. Time
itself has gone on like this; the years
have accumulated, first in drifts, then in
heaps, and now a vast mound, to which
the mountains are knolls, rises up and
overshadows us. Time lies heavy on the
world. The old, old earth is glad to turn
from the carkand care of drifted centuries
to the first sweet blades of green. — ' The
Open Air ' : Out of Doors in February.

THE moment the eye of the mind
is filled with the beauty of
things natural, an equal free-
dom and width of view come to it. Step
aside from the trodden footpath of per-
sonal experience, throwing away the
petty cynicism born of petty hopes dis-

18

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

appointed. Step out upon the broad
down beside the green corn, and let its
freshness become part of life.
The wind passes, and it bends— let the
wind, too, pass over the spirit. From
the cloud-shadow it emerges to the sun-
shine—let the heart come out from the
shadow of roofs to the open glow of the
sky. High above, the songs of the larks
fall as rain — receive it with open hands.
Pure is the colour of the green flags, the
slender-pointed blades— let the thought
be pure as the light that shines through
that colour. Broad are the downs and
open the aspect— gather the breadth and
largeness of view. Never can that view
be wide enough and large enough; there
will always be room to aim higher. As
the air of the hills enriches the blood,
so let the presence of these beautiful
things enrich the inner sense. One
memory of the green corn, fresh beneath
the sun and wind, will lift up the heart

19

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

from the clods. — 'The Open Air': Out
of Doors in February.

THE lover of nature has the
highest art in his soul. So
I think the bluff English
farmer who takes such pride and delight
in his dogs and horses is a much greater
man of art than any Frenchman pre-
paring, with cynical dexterity of hand,
some coloured presentment of flashy
beauty for the Salon. The English girl
who loves her horse— and English girls
do love their horses most intensely— is
infinitely more artistic in that fact than
the cleverest painter on enamel. They
who love nature are the real artists;
the 'artists' are copyists.— 'The Open
Air ' : Outside London.

AS a few strokes from a loving
hand will soothe a weary fore-
L head, so the gentle pressure of
the wild grass soothes and strokes away

20

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

the nervous tension born of civilised life.
— ' The Open Air ' : Outside London.

THE forest is gone ; but the spirit
of nature stays, and can be
found by those who search for
it. Dearly as I love the open air, I
cannot regret the mediaeval days. I do
not wish them back again; I would
sooner fight in the foremost ranks of
Time. Nor do we need them, for the
spirit of nature stays, and will always be
here, no matter to how high a pinnacle
of thought the human mind may attain ;
still the sweet air, and the hills, and the
sea, and the sun, will always be with
us.— 'The Open Air': Outside London.

MASTS are always dreamy to
look at : they speak a ro-
mance of the sea; of unknown
lands ; of distant forests aglow with
tropical colours and abounding with

21

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

strange forms of life. In the hearts of
most of us there is always a desire for
something beyond experience. Hardly
any of us but have thought, Some day
I will go on a long voyage; but the
years go by, and still we have not sailed.
—'The Open Air': Red Roofs of London.

THE streamlet in the woods is
full before the dove alights to
drink at it ; the flower in the
grass has expanded before the butterfly
comes. A great passion does not leap
into existence as violets sprang up
beneath the white feet of Aphrodite.
It has grown first. The grapes have
ripened in the sun before they are
plucked for wine.— 'The Dewy Morn.' l

OF old, old time the classic women
in the ' Violet Land ' of Greece
went out to the sunrise, and,
singing to Apollo, the sun, prayed that

i ' The Dewy Morn ' : Richard Bentley and Son.
22

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

their hearts might be satisfied, and their
homes secured; by the fountain they
asked of the water that the highest
aspirations of their souls might be
fulfilled; of the earth they asked an
abundance for those whom they loved.
No more the hymn is heard to the sun ;
no more the stream murmurs in an un-
dertone to the chorus of human hopes ;
no more the earth sees its wheat and
its flowers taken from it to be presented
to it again upon the altar in token of
gratitude and prayer. But still the
larks, as then, and still the thrushes,
the fleeting swallows, and the doves,
address themselves to sun, and earth,
and stream, and heaven. Their songs
vary not, their creed does not change,
their prayer goes forth to the same old
gods.

Have our hopes and hearts changed
in the centuries? No; not one whit—
1 The Dewy Morn.'

23

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

I THINK that those who have an
imaginative corner in their hearts
are better than those who have
not. They have a shrine— to a shrine
we bring our aspirations; there they
accumulate and secretly influence our
lives. — 'The Dewy Morn.'

A BOVE the clear sky was full of
/-\ stars, and among them the
-*- ^ beautiful planet Jupiter shone
serene. The sky was of a lovely night
blue ; it was an hour to think, to dream,
to revere, to love— a time when, if ever
it will, the soul reigns, and the coarse
rude acts of day are forgotten in the
aspirations of the inmost mind.
The night was calm— still ; it was in no
haste to do anything— it had nothing
it needed to do. To be is enough for
the stars.—' The Dewy Morn.'

24

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

OVERHEAD and eastwards
there shone a glory of blue
heaven, illuminated from with-
in with golden light. The deep rich
azure was lit up with an inner gold ; it
was a time to worship, to lift up the
heart. Is there anything so wondrously
beautiful as the sky just before the sun
rises in summer? — 'The Dewy Morn.'

HUMAN dramatists arrange for
all their characters to find
happiness in the end. If there
be any difficulty some one transfers his
or her love with the greatest facility
to another person; and thus being all
paired off, they dance down the stage to
the tune of ' Sir Roger de Coverley.'
The drama of real life never ends like
this. Some one has to suffer— always
some one has to suffer.
The old Greeks dwelt on the tendency

25

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

of human affairs to drift downwards
irresistibly to unhappiness. Guilt —
that is, untoward and often involuntary
actions— pulls generation after genera-
tion heavily as lead down, down, down.
Sophocles, ^schylus— take which you
will, still the same thought pervades
their sculptured groups (for they are
sculptured in words, nude, noble, un-
happy). Grief falls upon human beings as
the rain, not selecting good or evil, visit-
ing the innocent, condemning those who
have done no wrong.—' The Dewy Morn.'

THE stolid are alone happy. Yet
there drops from the azure
heaven a beam of light, and
whomsoever that ray touches must follow
it to the end, though cheeks grow pale,
though shoulders stoop, though ache
and pain increase. The path of the
gods pursues beauty, but the stolid are
alone happy.—' The Dewy Morn.'

26

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

A MAXIM well established is that
the man and the woman always
come out in their deeds. What-
ever they may profess, in time the act
betrays them, and upon that outward
act and deed the world invariably bases
its opinion of their character. Is this
just ? Do you always do as you would
like to do were it in your power ? I find
that circumstances force me often to act
in a manner quite opposite to what I
should prefer ; I am, of course, judged
by my acts, but do they really afford a
true key to my character ? I think not.
—'The Dewy Morn.'

IF our old habits are suspended, how
rapidly the touch of living hands
disappears from our inanimate
surroundings! Almost the instant the
living hand is withdrawn, dust settles on
the furniture and the room. ... It is

27

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

sorrowful to reflect how soon— but a
day or two— and already the dust has
gathered over the place we filled.— 'The
Dewy Morn.'

MEADOW and brook, wheat-
fields and hills — a simple
landscape, yet such as is not
to be surpassed by any on earth. A
common landscape— there are hundreds
such in our England— yet beyond com-
pare. There are none like it elsewhere
in the wide world.— 'The Dewy Morn.'

HOW powerful, and yet uncon-
trollable by ourselves, is the
influence of our life upon the
lives of others ! . . . For aught you can
tell, your existence may be a fate to
another— another's to you.— 'The Dewy
Morn.'

28

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

THE heart, and the hand, and
the mind of a man are for ever
driving onwards, and no pro-
fundity of rest ever comes to his inmost
consciousness. At dawn he looks for-
ward to the noonday. So that true and
restful happiness is for woman only,
though it is given to her by man.—' The
Dewy Morn.'

SO many, and so many, who have
loved in the long passage of
time, but are gone as the shadow
goes from the dial when the sun sinks.
Are, then, our noblest feelings to fade
and become void ?

Upon the sun-dial there were curious
graven circles and interwoven angles,
remnants of the ancient lore which saw
fate in the stars and read things above
nature in nature. Symbols and signs
are still needed, for the earth and life

29

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

are still mysterious; they cannot be
written; they require the inarticulate
sign of the magician. Let us not out-
live love in our days, and come to look
back with sorrow on those times.
You have seen the ships upon the sea ;
they sail hither and thither thousands of
miles. Do they find aught equal to love?
Can they bring back precious gems to
rival it from the rich south ?
The reapers have been in the corn these
thousand years, the miners in the earth,
the toilers in the city ; in all the labour
and long-suffering is there anything
like unto love? Any reward or profit
in the ships, the mines, the ware-
houses?

What are the institutions of man, the
tawdry state, the false law, the sub-
sidised superstition, and poor morality,
that pale shadow of truth — what are
these by love ?

Could but love stay, could but love

30

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

have its will, no more would be needed
for eternity.—' The Dewy Morn.'

I WAS not more than eighteen when
an inner and esoteric meaning
began to come to me from all the
visible universe, and indefinable aspira-
tions filled me. I found them in the
grass fields, under the trees, on the
hill-tops, at sunrise, and in the night.
There was a deeper meaning every-
where. The sun burned with it, the
broad front of morning beamed with it ;
a deep feeling entered me while gazing
at the sky in the azure noon, and in
the star-lit evening. — ' The Story of my
Heart.' »

LOOK at another person while liv-
ing; the soul is not visible,
J only the body which it animates.
Therefore, merely because after death

' The Story of my Heart ' : Longmans, Green and Co.

31

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

the soul is not visible is no demonstration
that it does not still live. The condition
of being unseen is the same condition
which occurs while the body is living,
so that intrinsically there is nothing
exceptional, or supernatural, in the life
of the soul after death.— ' The Story of
my Heart'

MY soul has never been, and
never can be, dipped in time.
Time has never existed, and
never will ; it is a purely artificial arrange-
ment. It is eternity now, it always was
eternity, and always will be. By no
possible means could I get into time if
I tried. I am in eternity now, and must
there remain. Haste not, be at rest,
this Now is eternity. Because the idea
of time has left my mind— if ever it had
any hold on it — to me the man interred
in the tumulus is living now as I live.
We are both in eternity. There is no

32

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

separation— no past ; eternity, the Now,
is continuous. When all the stars have
revolved they only produce Now again.
The continuity of Now is for ever. — ' The
Story of my Heart.'

AS I move about in the sunshine
I feel in the midst of the super-
. natural : in the midst of im-
mortal things. It is impossible to wrest
the mind down to the same laws that
rule pieces of timber, water, or earth.
They do not control the soul, however
rigidly they may bind matter. — 'The
Story of my Heart'

THE air, the sunlight, the night,
all that surrounds me seems
crowded with inexpressible
powers, with the influence of souls, or
existences, so that I walk in the midst
of immortal things. — ' The Story of my
Heart.'

33 c

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

SOMETIMES I have concentrated
myself, and driven away by con-
tinued will all sense of outward
appearances, looking straight with the
full power of my mind inwards on myself.
I find ' I ' am there ; an ' I ' I do not
wholly understand or know, something
is there distinct from earth and timber,
from flesh and bones. Recognising it,
I feel on the margin of a life unknown,
very near, almost touching it: on the
verge of powers which if I could grasp
would give me an immense breadth of
existence, and ability to execute what
I now only conceive; most probably of
far more than that. To see that ' I ' is
to know that I am surrounded with im-
mortal things. If, when I die, that ' I '
also dies, and becomes extinct, still even
then I have had the exaltation of these
ideas.—' The Story of my Heart.'

34

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

THERE is so much beyond all
that has ever yet been im-
agined. As I write these
words, in the very moment, I feel that
the whole air, the sunshine out yonder
lighting- up the ploughed earth, the
distant sky, the circumambient ether,
and that far space, is full of soul-secrets,
soul-life, things outside the experience
of all the ages. — 'The Story of my
Heart'

TWELVE thousand years since
the Caveman stood at the
mouth of his cavern and
gazed out at the night and the stars.
He looked again and saw the sun rise
beyond the sea. He reposed in the
noontide heat under the shade of the
trees, he closed his eyes and looked into
himself. He was face to face with the
earth, the sun, the night ; face to face
with himself. There was nothing be-

35

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

tween ; no wall of written tradition ; no
built-up system of culture— his naked
mind was confronted by naked earth.
He made three idea-discoveries, wrest-
ing them from the unknown : the exist-
ence of his soul, immortality, the deity.
Now to-day, as I write, I stand in exactly
the same position as the Caveman.
Written tradition, systems of culture,
modes of thought, have for me no exist-
ence. If ever they took any hold of my
mind it must have been very slight ; they
have long ago been erased. From earth
and sea and sun, from night, the stars,
from day, the trees, the hills, from my
own soul— from these I think. I stand
this moment at the mouth of the ancient
cave, face to face with nature, face to
face with the supernatural, with myself.
My naked mind confronts the unknown.
— * The Story of my Heart.'

36

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

IS there any theory, philosophy, or
creed, is there any system or cul-
ture, any formulated method able
to meet and satisfy each separate item
of this agitated pool of human life ? By
which they may be guided, by which
hope, by which look forward? Not a
mere illusion of the craving heart —
something real, as real as the solid
walls of fact against which, like drifted
seaweed, they are dashed; something
to give each separate personality sun-
shine and a flower in its own existence
now; something to shape this million-
handed labour to an end and outcome
that will leave more sunshine and more
flowers to those who must succeed?
Something real now, and not in the
spirit-land ; in this hour now, as I stand
and the sun burns. Can any creed,
philosophy, system, or culture endure
the test and remain unmolten in this
fierce focus of human life ? . . . Full well

37

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

aware that all has failed, yet, side by side
with the sadness of that knowledge,
there lives on in me an unquenchable
belief, thought burning like the sun,
that there is yet something to be found,
something real, something to give each
separate personality sunshine and flowers
in its own existence now. Something to
shape this million-handed labour to an
end and outcome, leaving accumulated
sunshine and flowers to those who shall
succeed. It must be dragged forth by
might of thought from the immense
forces of the universe. — 'The Story of
my Heart.'

OF all the inventions of casuistry
with which man for ages has
in various ways manacled him-
self and stayed his own advance, there
is none equally potent with the supposi-
tion that nothing more is possible. Once
well impress on the mind that it has

38

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

already all, that advance is impossible
because there is nothing further, and it
is chained like a horse to an iron pin in
the ground. It is the most deadly— the
most fatal poison of the mind. No such
casuistry has ever for a moment held
me, but still, if permitted, the constant
routine of house-life, the same work,
the same thought in the work, the little
circumstances regularly recurring, will
dull the keenest edge of thought. By
daily pilgrimage, I escaped from it back
to the sun.— 'The Story of my Heart.'

THE soul throbs like the sea for
a larger life. No thought
which I have ever had has
satisfied my soul.— 'The Story of my
Heart'

THE pettiness of house life-
chairs and tables— and the
pettiness of observances, the
petty necessity of useless labour, useless

39

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

because productive of nothing-, chafe me
the year through. I want to be always
in company with the sun, and sea, and
earth. These and the stars by night
are my natural companions. — 'The Story
of my Heart.'

O BEAUTIFUL human life!
Tears come in my eyes as
I think of it. So beautiful,
so inexpressibly beautiful! . . . How
willingly I would strew the paths of
all with flowers; how beautiful a de-
light to make the world joyous ! The
song should never be silent, the dance
never still, the laugh should sound like
water which runs for ever. — ' The Story
of my Heart.'

THE credit given by the un-
thinking to the statement
that all affairs are directed
has been the bane of the world since the

40

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

days of the Egyptian papyre and the
origin of superstition. So long as men
firmly believe that everything is fixed
for them, so long is progress impossible.
If you argue yourself into the belief that
you cannot walk to a place, you cannot
walk there; but if you start, you can
walk there easily.— 'The Story of my
Heart.'

I MYSELF maintain that the mind
of man is practically infinite. It
can understand anything brought
before it. It has not the power of its
own motion to bring everything before
it, but when anything is brought it is
understood. It is like sitting in a room
with one window: you cannot compel
everything to pass the window, but
whatever does pass is seen. It is like
a magnifying glass, which magnifies
and explains everything brought into
its focus.— 'The Story of my Heart'

41

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

SO wedded and so confirmed is the
world in its narrow grove of self,
so stolid and so complacent
under the immense weight of misery,
so callous to its own possibilities, and
so grown to its chains, that I almost
despair to see it awakened. — ' The Story
of my Heart.'

I VERILY believe that the earth in
one year produces enough food to
last for thirty. Why, then, have
we not enough ? Why do people die of
starvation, or lead a miserable existence
on the verge of it ? Why have millions
upon millions to toil from morning to
evening just to gain a mere crust of
bread? Because of the absolute lack
of organisation by which such labour
should produce its effect, the absolute
lack of distribution, the absolute lack
even of the very idea that such things
are possible. Nay, even to mention such

42

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

things, to say that they are possible, is
criminal with many. Madness could
hardly go farther.— * The Story of my
Heart.'

AT this hour, out of thirty-
four millions who inhabit
^ this country, two-thirds— say
twenty-two millions — live within thirty
years of that abominable institution the
poor-house. That any human being
should dare to apply to another the
epithet ' pauper ' is, to me, the greatest,
the vilest, the most unpardonable crime
that could be committed. Each human
being, by mere birth, has a birthright
in this earth and all its productions;
and if they do not receive it, then it is
they who are injured, and it is not
the 'pauper'— O inexpressibly wicked
word ! it is the well-to-do who are the
criminal classes.
It matters not in the least if the poor

43

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

be improvident, or drunken, or evil in
any way. Food and drink, roof and
clothes, are the inalienable right of
every child born into the light. If the
world does not provide it freely— not as a
grudging gift but as a right, as a son of
the house sits down to breakfast— then
is the world mad. But the world is not
mad, only in ignorance— an interested
ignorance, kept up by strenuous exer-
tions, from which infernal darkness it
will, in course of time, emerge, marvel-
ling at the past as a man wonders at and
glories in the light who has escaped from
blindness.— 'The Story of my Heart.'

WE must endeavour to under-
stand the crookedness and
unfamiliar curves of the
conditions of life. Beyond that still
there are other ideas. Never, never
rest contented with any circle of ideas,
but always be certain that a wider one

44

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

is still possible. For my thought is like
a hyperbola that continually widens
ascending. — ' The Story of my Heart.'

A RIVER runs itself clear dur-
ing the night, and in sleep
thought becomes pellucid. All
the hurrying to and fro, the unrest
and stress, the agitation and confusion
subside. Like a sweet pure spring,
thought pours forth to meet the light,
and is illumined to its depths. The
dawn at my window ever causes a desire
for larger thought, the recognition of the
light at the moment of waking kindles
afresh the wish for a broad day of the
mind. There is a certainty that there
are yet ideas further, and greater — that
there is still a limitless beyond. I know
at that moment that there is no limit to
the things that may be yet in material
and tangible shape besides the im-
material perceptions of the soul. The

45

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

dim white light of the dawn speaks it.
This prophet which has come with its
wonders to the bedside of every human
being- for so many thousands of years
faces me once again with the upheld
finger of light. Where is the limit to
that physical sign ? — ' The Story of my
Heart.'

AT present the endeavour to
make discoveries is like gaz-
^ ing at the sky up through the
boughs of an oak.

Here a beautiful star shines clearly;
here a constellation is hidden by a
branch; a universe by a leaf. Some
mental instrument or organon is required
to enable us to distinguish between the
leaf which may be removed and a real
void: when to cease to look in one
direction, and to work in another. — * The
Story of my Heart.'

46

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

COULD we employ the ocean as
a lens, and force truth from the
sky, even then I think there
would be much more beyond. — 'The
Story of my Heart.'

BEFORE a bridge is built, or a
structure erected, or an inter-
oceanic canal made, there must
be a plan, and before a plan the thought
in the mind. So that it is correct to say
the mind bores tunnels through the
mountains, bridges the rivers, and con-
structs the engines which are the pride
of the world.—' The Story of my Heart.'

SO great is the value of the soul
that it seems to me, if the soul
lived and received its aspirations
it would not matter if the material uni-
verse melted away as snow. Many turn
aside the instant the soul is mentioned,
and I sympathise with them in one

47

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

sense: they fear lest, if they acknowledge
it, they will be fettered by mediaeval
conditions. My contention is that the
restrictions of the mediaeval ever should
entirely be cast into oblivion, but the
soul recognised and employed. Instead
of slurring over the soul I desire to see
it at its highest perfection.—' The Story
of my Heart.'

THE restriction of thought to
purely mechanical grooves
blocks progress in the same
way as the restrictions of mediaeval
superstition. Let the wind think, dream,
imagine: let it have perfect freedom.
To shut out the soul is to put us back
more than twelve thousand years. Just
as outside light, and the knowledge
gained from light, there are, I think,
other mediums from which, in times to
come, intelligence will be obtained, so
outside the mental and the spiritual

48

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES
ideas we now possess I believe there
exists a whole circle of ideas. In the
conception of the idea that there are
others, I lay claim to another idea. —
1 The Story of my Heart.'

GIVE me life strong and full as
the brimming' ocean ; give me
thoughts wide as its plain ;
give me a soul beyond these. Sweet is
the bitter sea by the shore where the
faint blue pebbles are lapped by the
green-grey wave, where the wind-quiver-
ing foam is loth to leave the lashed
stone. Sweet is the bitter sea, and the
clear green in which the gaze seeks the
soul, looking through the glass into
itself. The sea thinks for me as I listen
and ponder: the sea thinks, and every
boom of the wave repeats my prayer. —
'The Story of my Heart.'

49

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

MY soul cannot reach to its full
desire of prayer. I need no
earth, or sea, or sun to think
my thought. If my thought-part— the
psyche — were entirely separated from
the body, and from the earth, I should
of myself desire the same. In itself my
soul desires; my existence, my soul-
existence is in itself my prayer, and so
long as it exists so long will it pray
that I may have the fullest soul-life. —
'The Story of my Heart'

THOUGH not often consciously
recognised, perhaps this is
the great pleasure of summer,
to watch the earth, the dead particles,
revolving themselves into the living
case of life, to see the seed-leaf push
aside the clod and become by degrees
the perfumed flower. From the tiny
mottled egg come the wings that by-
and-by shall pass the immense sea. It

50

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

is in this marvellous transformation of
clods and cold matter into living things
that the joy and the hope of summer
reside. Every blade of grass, each leaf,
each separate floret and petal, is an
inscription speaking of hope. Consider
the grasses and the oaks, the swallows,
the sweet blue butterfly— they are one
and all a sign and token showing before
our eyes earth made into life. So that
my hope becomes as broad as the
horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf,
sung on every bough, reflected in the
gleam of every flower. There is so
much for us yet to come, so much to
be gathered, and enjoyed. Not for you
or me, now, but for our race, who will
ultimately use this magical secret for
their happiness. Earth holds secrets
enough to give them the life of the
fabled Immortals. My heart is fixed
firm and stable in the belief that ulti-
mately the sunshine and the summer,

5i

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

the flowers and the azure sky, shall
become, as it were, interwoven into
man's existence. He shall take from
all their beauty and enjoy their glory.
Hence it is that a flower is to me so
much more than stalk and petals. When
I look in the glass I see that every line
in my face means pessimism ; but in
spite of my face— that is my experience
— I remain an optimist. Time with an
unsteady hand has etched thin crooked
lines, and, deepening the hollows, has
cast the original expression into shadow.
Pain and sorrow flow over us with little
ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on the
beach. Let us not look at ourselves
but onwards, and take strength from the
leaf and the signs of the field. He is in-
deed despicable who cannot look onwards
to the ideal life of man. Not to do so is
to deny our birthrightof mind. — 'The Life
of the Fields':1 The Pageant of Summer.

1 'The Life of the Fields ' : Chatto and Windus.
52

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

THE fervour of the sunbeams
descending in a tidal flood
rings on the strung harp of
earth. It is this exquisite undertone,
heard and yet unheard, which brings the
mind into sweet accordance with the
wonderful instrument of nature. — 'The
Life of the Fields': The Pageant of
Summer.

MANY times the bees have re-
turned to their hives, and
thus the index of the day
advances. It is nothing to the green-
finches ; all their thoughts are in their
song-talk. The sunny moment is to
them all in all. So deeply are they rapt
in it that they do not know whether it
is a moment or a year. There is no
clock for feeling, for joy, for love. . . .
Each moment, as with the greenfinches,
is so full of life that it seems so long and
so sufficient in itself. Not only the days,

53

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

but life itself lengthens in summer. I
would spread abroad my arms and
gather more of it to me, could I do so.
—'The Life of the Fields' : The Pageant
of Summer.

LET not the eyes grow dim, look
not back but forward ; the soul
■ must uphold itself like the sun.
Let us labour to make the heart grow
larger as we become older, as the
spreading oak gives more shelter. That
we could but take to the soul some of
the greatness and the beauty of the
summer!— 'The Life of the Fields':
The Pageant of Summer.

I CANNOT leave it; I must stay
under the old tree in the midst of
the long grass, the luxury of the
leaves, and the song in the very air. I
seem as if I could feel all the glowing
life the sunshine gives and the south

54

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

wind calls to being. The endless grass,
the endless leaves, the immense strength
of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy
of finch and blackbird ; from all of
them I receive a little. Each gives me
something of the pure joy they gather for
themselves. In the blackbird's melody
one note is mine ; in the dance of the
leaf shadows the formed maze is for
me, though the motion is theirs; the
flowers with a thousand faces have
collected the kisses of the morning.
Feeling with them, I receive some, at
least, of their fulness of life. Never
could I have enough; never stay long
enough— whether here or whether lying
on the shorter sward under the sweeping
and graceful birches, or on the thyme-
scented hills. Hour after hour and still
not enough. Or walking, the footpath
was never long enough, or my strength
sufficient to endure till the mind was
weary. The exceeding beauty of the

55

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

earth, in her splendour of life, yields
a new thought with every petal. The
hours when the mind is absorbed by
beauty are the only hours when we really
live, so that the longer we can stay
among these things so much the more
is snatched from the inevitable Time.
Let the shadow advance upon the dial
— I can watch it with equanimity while
it is there to be watched. It is only
when the shadow is not there, when the
clouds of winter cover it, that the dial
is terrible. The invisible shadow goes
on and steals from us. But now, while
I can see the shadow of the tree and
watch it slowly gliding along the surface
of the grass, it is mine. These are the
only hours that are not wasted — these
hours that absorb the soul and fill it
with beauty. This is real life, and all
else is illusion, or mere endurance.
Does this reverie of flowers and water-
fall and song form an ideal, a human

56

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

ideal, in the mind ? It does ; much the
same ideal that Phidias sculptured of
man and woman filled with a godlike
sense of the violet fields of grace, beauti-
ful beyond thought, calm as my turtle-
dove before the lurid lightning of the
unknown. To be beautiful and to be
calm, without mental fear, is the ideal
of Nature. If I cannot achieve it, at
least I can think it— 'The Life of the
Fields ' : The Pageant of Summer.

SO trustful are the doves, the squir-
rels, the birds of the branches,
and the creatures of the field.
Under their tuition let us rid ourselves
of mental terrors, and face death itself
as calmly as they do the livid lightning ;
so trustful and so content with their fate,
resting in themselves and unappalled.
If but by reason and will I could reach
the godlike calm and courage of what
we so thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-

57

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

dove, I should lead a nearly perfect life.
— ' The Life of the Fields ' : The Pageant
of Summer.

HUMAN thoughts and imagin-
ings written down are pale
and feeble in bright summer
light. The eye wanders away, and
rests more lovingly on greensward and
green lime leaves. The mind wanders
yet deeper and farther into the dreamy
mystery of the azure sky. . . . The
delicacy and beauty of thought or feeling
is so extreme that it cannot be inked
in ; it is like the green and blue of field
and sky, of veronica flower and grass
blade, which in their own existence
throw light and beauty on each other,
but in artificial colours repel. . . . Never
yet have I been able to write what I
felt about the sunlight only. Colour and
form and light are as magic to me. It
is a trance. It requires a language of

58

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

ideas to convey it. It is ten years since
I last reclined on that grass plot, and
yet I have been writing of it as if it was
yesterday, and every blade of grass is as
visible and real to me now as then. —
'The Life of the Fields': Meadow
Thoughts.

THERE is something beyond the
philosophies in the light, in
the grass-blades, the leaf, the
grasshopper, the sparrow on the wall.
Some day the great and beautiful thought
which hovers on the confines of the mind
will at last alight. In that is hope, the
whole sky is full of abounding hope.
Something beyond the books, that is
consolation.— 'The Life of the Fields':
Meadow Thoughts.

NATURE flingstreasures abroad,
puffs them with open lips
along on every breeze, piles
up lavish layers of them in the free open

59

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS
air, packs countless numbers together
in the needles of a fir-tree. Prodigality
and superfluity are stamped on every-
thing she does. The ear of wheat re-
turns a hundredfold the grain from
which it grew. The surface of the earth
offers to us far more than we can con-
sume—the grains, the seeds, the fruits,
the animals, the abounding products are
beyond the power of all the human race
to devour. They can, too, be multiplied
a thousandfold. There is no natural
lack. Whenever there is lack among
us it is from artificial causes, which
intelligence should remove. From the
littleness, and meanness, and niggardli-
ness forced upon us by circumstances,
what a relief to turn aside to the ex-
ceeding plenty of Nature! There are no
bounds to it, there is no comparison to
parallel it, so great is this generosity.—
'The Life of the Fields': Meadow
Thoughts.

00

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

ALONE in the green-roofed cave,
alone with the sunlight and
the pure water, there was a
sense of something more than these.
The water was more to me than water,
and the sun than sun. The gleaming
rays on the water in my palm held me
for a moment, the touch of the water
gave me something from itself. A
moment, and the gleam was gone, the
water flowing away, but I had had them.
Beside the physical water and physical
light I had received from them their
beauty; they had communicated to me
this silent mystery. The pure and
beautiful water, the pure, clear, and
beautiful light, each had given me some-
thing of their truth.—' The Life of the
Fields ' : Meadow Thoughts.

61

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

IF the air at the sea beach is good,
that of the hills above the sea is
at least twice as good, and twice
as strengthening. It possesses all the
virtue of the sea air without the moisture
which ultimately loosens the joints, and
seems to penetrate to the very nerves.
Those who desire air and quick recovery
should go to the hills, where the wind
has a scent of the sunbeams.— * The
Life of the Fields ' : Clematis Lane.

THE lost leaves measure our
years ; they are gone as the
days are gone, and the bare
branches silently speak of a new year,
slowly advancing to its buds, its foliage,
and fruit. . . . With their annual loss of
leaves, and renewal, oak and elm and
ash and beech seem to stand by us and
to share our thoughts.— 'The Life of the
Fields ' : January in the Sussex Woods.

62

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

THE sweet grass was wet with
dew as I walked through a
meadow in Somerset to the
river. The cuckoo sang, the pleasanter
perhaps because his brief tune was
nearly over, and all pleasant things seem
to have a deeper note as they draw
towards an end. Dew and sweet green
grass were the more beautiful because
of the knowledge that the high hills
around were covered by sun-dried, wiry
heather. Riverside mead, dew-laden
grass, and sparkling stream were like
an oasis in the dry desert. They re-
freshed the heart to look upon as water
refreshes the weary. — 'The Life of the
Fields ' : The Water-Colley.

IT is the birds and other creatures
peculiar to the water that render
fly-fishing so pleasant ; were they
all destroyed, and nothing left but the
mere fish, one might as well stand and

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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

fish in a stone cattle-trough. I hope all
true lovers of sport will assist in pre-
serving rather than in killing them. —
'The Life of the Fields': The Water-
Colley.

IN the bunches of grass and by the
gateways the germander speed-
well looks like tiny specks of blue
stolen, like Prometheus' fire, from the
summer sky. — ' The Life of the Fields ' :
Notes on Landscape Painting.

WITHOUT hedges England
would not be England.
Hedges, thick and high, and
full of flowers, birds, and living creatures,
of shade and flecks of sunshine dancing
up and down the bark of the trees— I
love their very thorns. You do not
know how much there is in the hedges.
We have still the woods, with here and
there a forest, the beauty of the hills,

64

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

and the charm of winding brooks. I
never see roads, or horses, men, or any-
thing when I get beside a brook. There
is the grass, and the wheat, the clouds,
the delicious sky, and the wind, and the
sunlight which falls on the heart like
a song. It is the same, the very same,
only I think it is brighter and more
lovely now than it was twenty years
ago. — 'The Life of the Fields': Notes
on Landscape Painting.

A SLUMBEROUS silence of
abundant light, of the full sum-
mer day, of the high flood of
summer hours whose tide can rise no
higher. A time to linger and dream
under the beautiful breast of heaven,
heaven brooding and descending in pure
light upon man's handiwork. If the
light shall thus come in, and of its mere
loveliness overcome every aspect of
dreariness, why shall not the light of

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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

thought and hope— the light of the soul
— overcome and sweep away the dust
of our lives?— 'The Life of the Fields':
Sunlight in a London Square.

AND endless succession of labour,
l~\ under the brightness of sura-
*- -^ mer, under the gloom of win-
ter ; to my thought it is a sadness even
in the colour and light and glow of this
hour of sun, this ceaseless labour, re-
peating the furrow, reiterating the blow,
the same furrow, the same stroke— shall
we never know how to lighten it, how
to live with the flowers, the swallows,
the sweet delicious shade, and the mur-
mur of the stream ? . . . I hope that at
some time, by dint of bolder thought
and freer action, the world shall see a
race able to enjoy it without stint, a race
able to enjoy the flowers with which the
physical world is strewn, the colours of
the garden of life. To look backwards

66

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

with the swallow there is sadness to-
day, with the fleck of cloud there is
unrest, but forward with the broad
sunlight, there is hope. — 'The Life of
the Fields': Sunlight in a London
Square.

IT is a common effect of great things
to be overlooked. A moderately
large rock, a moderately large
house, is understood and mentally put
down, as it were, at a certain figure,
but the immense— which is beyond the
human— cannot enter the organs of the
senses. The portals of the senses are
not wide enough to receive it; you
must turn your back on it and reflect,
and add a little piece of it to another
little piece, and so build up your under-
standing.-'The Life of the Fields':
Venice in the East End.

67

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

WE labour on and think, and
carve our idols, and the pen
never ceases from its labour ;
but the lapse of the centuries has left us
in the same place. The doves who have
not laboured nor travailed in thought
possess the sunlight. Is not theirs the
preferable portion? — 'The Life of the
Fields': The Pigeons at the British
Museum.

IF any imagine they shall find thought
in many books, certainly they will
be disappointed. Thought dwells
by the stream and sea, by the hill and in
the woodland, in the sunlight and free
wind, where the wild dove haunts. —
' The Life of the Fields ' : The Pigeons
at the British Museum.

THOSE original grains of true
thought were found beside the
stream, the sea, in the sun-
light, at the shady verge of woods. Let

68

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

us leave this beating and turning over
of empty straw; let us return to the
stream and the hills; let us ponder by
night in view of the stars. — ' The Life of
the Fields ' : The Pigeons at the British
Museum.

SINCE the days of ancient Greece
the doves have remained in the
sunshine ; we who have laboured
have found nothing. In the sunshine,
by the shady verge of woods, by the
sweet waters where the wild dove sips,
there alone will thought be found. — ' The
Life of the Fields ' : The Pigeons at the
British Museum.

DID ever any one have a beauti-
ful idea or feeling without be-
ing repulsed? — 'Amaryllis at
the Fair.'1

1 ' Amaryllis at the Fair ' : Sampson Low, Marston &
Co.

69

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

WHAT a fallacy it is that hard
work is the making of
money; I could show you
plenty of men who have worked the
whole of their lives as hard as ever could
possibly be, and who are still as far off
independence as when they began. In
fact, that is the rule; the winning of
independence is rarely the result of
work, else nine out of ten would be well-
to-do. — 'Amaryllis at the Fair.'

SUCH emanations as there may be
from burning logs are odorous
of the woodland, of the sunshine,
of the fields and fresh air; the wood
simply gives out as it burns the sweet-
ness it has imbibed through its leaves
from the atmosphere which floats above
grass and flowers. — 'Amaryllis at the
Fair.'

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OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

LES MIS£RABLES who have to
write like myself must put up
» with anything, and be thankful
for permission to exist ; but people with
mighty incomes from tea, or crockery-
ware, or mud, or bricks and mortar, —
why on earth these happy and favoured
mortals do not live like the gods passes
understanding. — ' Amaryllis at the Fair.'

I AM not a Roman Catholic ; but I
must confess that if I could be
assured any particular piece of
wood had really formed a part of the
Cross, I should think it the most valuable
thing in the world, to which Koh-i-noors
would be mud.

I am a pagan, and think the heart and
soul above crowns. — 'Amaryllis at the
Fair.'

T is possible to think till you cannot
act.—' Amaryllis at the Fair/
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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

THE photographer fixes the head
of the sitter by a sort of stand
at the back, which holds it
steady in one position while the camera
takes the picture. In life most people
have their heads fixed in the claws of
some miserable pettiness, which in-
terests them so greatly that they tramp
on steadily forward, staring ahead, and
there's not the slightest fear of their
seeing anything outside the rut they are
travelling. — ' Amaryllis at the Fair.'

IT is the modern fashion to laugh at
the East, and despise the Turks
and all their ways, making Grand
Viziers of barbers, and setting waiters in
high places, with the utmost contempt
for anything reasonable,— all so incon-
gruous and chance-ruled. In truth, all
things in our very midst go on in the
Turkish manner; crooked men are set
in straight places, and straight people

72

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

in crooked places, just the same as if we
had all been dropped promiscuously out
of a bag and shook down together on the
earth to work out our lives, quite irrespec-
tive of our abilities and natures. Such
an utter jumble. — 'Amaryllis at the Fair.'

IN time, long time, people's original
feelings get strangely confused and
overlaid. The churchwardens of
the eighteenth century plastered the
fresco paintings of the fourteenth in their
churches— covered themoverwith yellow-
ish mortar. The mould grows up, and
hides the capital of the fallen column ; the
acanthus is hidden in earth. At the foot
of the oak, where it is oldest, the bark
becomes dense and thick, impenetrable,
and without sensitiveness ; you may cut
off an inch thick without reaching the sap.
A sort of scale or caking in long, long
time grows over original feelings. —
1 Amaryllis at the Fair.'

73

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

IT is not the particular cast of
features that makes a man great,
and gives him a pre-eminence
among his fellows. It is the character
— the mind.

A great genius commands attention at
once by his presence, and so a woman
may equally impress by the power of
her nature. Her moral strength asserts
itself in subtle ways.— 'Amaryllis at the
Fair.'

THERE is nothing so good to
the human heart aswell agreed
conversation, when you know
that your companion will answer to your
thought as the anvil meets the hammer,
ringing sound to merry stroke; better
than wine, better than sleep, like love
itself— for love is agreement of thought.
— ' Amaryllis at the Fair.'

74

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

WHEN the east wind ceases,
and the sun shines above,
and the flowers beneath 'a
summer's day in lusty May,' then is the
time an Interlude in Heaven. — 'Amaryllis
at the Fair.'

THAT is the saddest of thoughts
— as we grow older the
romance fades, and all things
become commonplace.
Half our lives are spent in wishing for
to-morrow, the other half in wishing for
yesterday.

Wild-flowers alone never become com-
monplace. The white wood-sorrel at
the foot of the oak, the violet in the
hedge of the vale, the thyme on the
wind-swept downs, they were as fresh
this year as last, as dear to-day as
twenty years since, even dearer, for they
grow now, as it were, in the earth we
have made for them of our hopes, our

75

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

prayers, our emotions, our thoughts.—
'Amaryllis at the Fair.'

YOU cannot draw a bird in flight.
Swallows are attempted often-
est, and done worst of all.
How can you draw life itself? What is
life? you cannot even define it. The
swallow's wing has the motion of life —
its tremble— its wonderful delicacy of
vibration— the instant change — the slip
of the air ;— no man will ever be able to
draw a flying swallow. — 'Amaryllis at
the Fair.'

IF once the mind has been dipped in
Fleet Street, let the meads be
never so sweet, the mountain-top
never so exalted, still to Fleet Street the
mind will return, because there is that
other mind, without whose sympathy
even success is nothing — the mind of the
world.

76

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

I am, of course, thinking not only of
the thoroughfare, Fleet Street, but of
all that the printing-press means. —
'Amaryllis at the Fair.'

THE sun at his meridian pours
forth his light, forgetting, in
all the inspiration of his
strength and glory, that without an
altar-screen of green his love must
scorch. Joy in life; joy in life. The
ears listen, and want more ; the eyes are
gratified with gazing, and desire yet
further; the nostrils are filled with the
sweet odours of flower and sap. The
touch, too, has its pleasures, dallying
with leaf and flower. Can you not
almost grasp the odour-laden air and
hold it in the hollow of the hand?1 —
1 Nature near London ' : Woodlands.

1 ' Nature near London ' : Chatto and "Windus.

77

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

« ALWAYS get over a stile,' is
L\ the one rule that should ever
a. JL be borne in mind by those
who wish to see the land as it really is —
that is to say, never omit to explore a
footpath, for never was there a footpath
yet which did not pass something of
interest. — 'Nature near London ' : Foot-
paths.

IN the pasture over the stile a wan
cow feeds unmoved, calmly con-
tent, gathering the grass with
rough tongue. It is not only what you
actually see along the path, but what
you remember to have seen, that gives
it its beauty. — 'Nature near London':
Footpaths.

OUT again into the road as the
sun sinks, and westwards the
wind lifts a cloud of dust,
which is lit up and made rosy by the

78

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

rays passing through it. For such is the
beauty of the sunlight that it can impart
a glory even to dust. — ' Nature near
London': Footpaths.

THE wayside is open to all, and
that which it affords may be
enjoyed without fee ; therefore
it is that I return to it so often. It is a
fact that common hedgerows often yield
more of general interest than the inner-
most recesses of carefully guarded pre-
serves, which by day are frequently still,
silent, and denuded of everything, even
of game; nor can flowers flourish in such
thick shade, nor where fir-needles cover
the ground. — ' Nature near London ' :
Nightingale Road.

TH E brimming brook, as it wound
towards me through the meads,
seemed to tremble on the verge
of overflowing, as the crown of wine in a

79

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

glass rises yet does not spill. Level with
the green grass, the water gleamed
as though polished where it flowed
smoothly, crossed with the dark shadows
of willows which leaned over it. By the
bridge, where the breeze rushed through
the arches, a ripple flashed back the
golden rays. The surface by the shore
slipped towards a side hatch and passed
over in a liquid curve, clear and unvary-
ing, as if of solid crystal, till shattered
on the stones, where the air caught up
and played with the sound of the bubbles
as they broke. — ' Nature near London ' :
A Brook.

OCTOBER'S winds are too
searching for us to linger be-
side the brook, but still it is
pleasant to pass by and remember the
summer days. For the year is never
gone by; in a moment we recall the
sunshine we enjoyed in May, the roses

80

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

we gathered in June, the first wheat-ear
we plucked as the green corn filled.
Other events go by and are forgotten,
and even the details of our own lives,
so immensely important to us at the
moment, in time fade from the memory
till the date we fancied we should never
forget has to be sought in a diary.
But the year is always with us; the
months are familiar always; they have
never gone by.—' Nature near London ' :
A London Trout.

HOW swiftly the much-desired
summer comes upon us! Even
with the reapers at work be-
fore one it is difficult to realise that it
has not only come, but will soon be
passing away. Sweet summer is but
just long enough for the happy loves
of the larks.—' Nature near London ' :
Wheatfields.

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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

SO time advances till to-day, watch-
ing the reapers from the shadow
of the copse, it seems as if with-
in that golden expanse there must be
something hidden, could you but rush
in quickly and seize it— some treasure
of the sunshine ; and there is a treasure,
the treasure of life stored in those little
grains, the slow product of the sun.
But it cannot be grasped in an impatient
moment — it must be gathered with
labour.—' Nature near London': Wheat-
fields.

RAPT and absorbed in discount
and dollars, in bills and mer-
chandise, the overstrung mind
deems itself all — the body is forgotten,
the physical body, which is subject to
growth and change, just as the plants
and the very grass of the field. But
there is a subtle connection between the
physical man and the great nature which

82

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

comes pressing up so closely to the
metropolis. He still depends in the
nineteenth century, as in the dim ages
before the Pyramids, upon this tiny
yellow grain here, rubbed out from the
ear of wheat. The clever mechanism of
the locomotive which bears him to and
fro, week after week and month after
month, from home to office and from
office home, has not rendered him in
the least degree independent of this. —
* Nature near London ' : Wheatfields.

THERE isa slight but perceptible
colour in the atmosphere of
summer. It is not visible
close at hand, nor always where the
light falls strongest, and if looked at
too long it sometimes fades away. But
over gorse and heath, in the warm
hollows of wheatfields, and round about
the rising ground there is something
more than air alone. It is not mist, nor

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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

the hazy vapour of autumn, nor the blue
tints that come over distant hills and
woods.

As there is a bloom upon the peach and
grape, so this is the bloom of summer.
The air is ripe and rich, full of the
emanations, the perfume, from corn and
flower and leafy tree. In strictness the
term will not, of course, be accurate, yet
by what other word can this appearance
in the atmosphere be described but as a
bloom ?— ' Nature near London ' : The
River.

THE swallows perch and sing
just over the muddy water. A
sow lies in the mire. But the
sweet swallows sing on softly : they do
not see the wallowing animal, the mud,
the brown water; they see only the
sunshine, the golden buttercups, and
the blue sky of summer. This is the
true way to look at this beautiful earth.

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OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

—'Nature near London': Round a
London Copse.

THE first appearance of a star
is very beautiful ; the actual
moment of first contact, as it
were, of the ray with the eye is always
a surprise, however often you may have
enjoyed it, and notwithstanding that
you are aware it will happen. Where
there was only the indefinite violet
before, the most intense gaze into which
could discover nothing, suddenly, as if
at that moment born, the point of light
arrives. So glorious is the night that
not all London, with its glare and smoke,
can smother the sky; in the midst of
the gas, and the roar, and the driving
crowd, look up from the pavement, and
there, straight above, are the calm
stars. — ' Nature near London ' : Magpie
Fields.

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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

THE blue sky (not, of course, the
blue of day), the white moon-
light, the bright stars— larger
at midnight and brilliant, in despite of
the moon, which cannot overpower them
in winter as she does in summer even-
ings—all are as beautiful as on the
distant hills of old. By night, at least,
even here, in the still silence, Heaven
has her own way.— 'Nature near Lon-
don ' : Magpie Fields.

WHAT can the world produce
equal to the June rose?
The common briar, the com-
monest of all, offers a flower which,
whether in itself, or the moment of its
appearance at the junction of all sweet
summer things, or its history and
associations, is not to be approached
by anything a millionaire could purchase.
—'Nature near London': Trees about
Town.

86

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

HOW melancholy the inexpress-
ible noise when the fair is
left behind, and the wet
vapours are settling and thickening
around it! But the melancholy is not
in the fair— the ploughboy likes it; it
is in ourselves, in the thought that thus,
though the years go by, so much of
human life remains the same — the same
blatant discord, the same monotonous
roundabout, the same poor gingerbread.
— 'Nature near London': The South-
down Shepherd.

THE little rules and little ex-
periences, all the petty ways
of narrow life, are shut off
behind by the ponderous and impassable
cliff; as if we had dwelt in the dim light
of a cave, but coming out at last to look
at the sun, a great stone had fallen and
closed the entrance, so that there was
no return to the shadow.

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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

The impassable precipice shuts off our
former selves of yesterday, forcing us
to look out over the sea only, or up to
the deeper Heaven.

These breadths draw out the soul ;
we feel that we have wider thoughts
than we knew ; the soul has been living,
as it were, in a nutshell, all unaware of
its own power, and now suddenly finds
freedom in the sun and the sky.— 'Nature
near London': The Breeze on Beachy
Head.

THERE is the sea below to bathe
in, the air of the sky up hither
to breathe, the sun to infuse
the invisible magnetism of his beams.
These are the three potent medicines
of nature, and they are medicines that
by degrees strengthen not only the
body but the unquiet mind. — 'Nature
near London': The Breeze on Beachy
Head.

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OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

THE sun sinks behind the summit
of the Downs, and slender
streaks of purple are drawn
along- above them. A shadow comes
forth from the cliff; a duskiness dwells
on the water; something tempts the
eye upwards, and near the zenith there
is a star.—' Nature near London ' : The
Breeze on Beachy Head.

THE bird upon the tree utters
the meaning of the wind— a
voice of the grass and wild-
flower, words of the green leaf; they
speak through that slender tone. Sweet-
ness of dew and rifts of sunshine, the
dark hawthorn touched with breadths
of open bud, the odour of the air, the
colour of the daffodil— all that is de-
licious and beloved of springtime are
expressed in his song. Genius is nature
and his lay, like the sap in the bough
from which he sings, rises without

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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

thought. — ' Field and Hedgerow ' : x
Hours of Spring.

IN time past, strong of foot, I walked
gaily up the noble hill that leads
to Beachy Head from Eastbourne,
joying greatly in the sun and the wind.
Every step crumbled up numbers of
minute grey shells, empty and dry, that
crunched under foot like hoar-frost or
fragile beads. They were very pretty;
it was a shame to crush them — such
vases as no king's pottery could make.
They lay by millions in the depths of
the sward, and I thought as I broke
them unwillingly that each of these had
once been a house of life. A living
creature dwelt in each and felt the joy
of existence, and was to itself all in all
— as if the great sun over the hill shone
for it, and the width of the earth under
was for it, and the grass and plants put

1 ' Field and Hedgerow ' : Longmans, Green & Co.

90

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

on purpose for it. They were dead, the
whole race of them, and these their
skeletons were as dust under my feet.
Nature sets no value upon life neither
of minute hill-snail nor of human being.—
1 Field and Hedgerow' : Hours of Spring.

NATURE sets no value upon life,
neither of mine nor of the
larks that sang years ago.
The earth is all in all to me, but I am
nothing to the earth : it is bitter to know
this before you are dead. These de-
licious violets are sweet for themselves ;
they were not shaped and coloured and
gifted with the exquisite proportion and
adjustment of odour and hue for me.—
' Field and Hedgerow' : Hours of Spring.

THERE was everything to repel
— the cold, the frost, the hard-
ness, the snow, dark sky and
ground, leaflessness; the very furze

9i

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

chilled and all benumbed. Yet the
forest was still beautiful. There was
no day that we did not, all of us, glance
out at it and admire it, and say some-
thing about it. Harder and harder grew
the frost, yet still the forest-clad hills
possessed a something that drew the
mind open to their largeness and
grandeur. Earth is always beautiful—
always. Without colour, or leaf or sun-
shine, or song of bird and flutter of
butterfly's wing ; without anything sen-
suous, without advantage or gilding of
summer— the power is ever there. Or
shall we not say that the desire of the
mind is ever there, and will satisfy itself,
in a measure at least, even with the
barren wild? The heart from the
moment of its first beat instinctively
longs for the beautiful; the means we
possess to gratify it are limited — we are
always trying to find the statue in the
rude block. Out of the vast block of

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OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

the earth the mind endeavours to carve
itself loveliness, nobility, and grandeur.
We strive for the right and the true ; it
is circumstance that thrusts wrong upon
us.— 'Field and Hedgerow': Hours of
Spring.

I WONDER whether it is a joy to
have bright scarlet spots, and to
be clad in the purple and gold of
life; is the colour felt by the creature
that wears it? The rose, restful of a
dewy morn before the sunbeams have
topped the garden wall, must feel a joy
in its own fragrance, and know the
exquisite hue of its stained petals. The
rose sleeps in its beauty.
The fly whirls his scarlet-spotted wings
about and splashes himself with sun-
light, like the children on the sands.
He thinks not of the grass and sun ; he
does not heed them at all— and that is
why he is so happy— any more than the

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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS
barefoot children ask why the sea is
there, or why it does not quite dry up
when it ebbs. He is unconscious ; he
lives without thinking about living;
and if the sunshine were a hundred
hours long, still it would not be long
enough. No, never enough of sun and
sliding shadows that come like a hand
over the table to lovingly reach our
shoulder, never enough of the grass
that smells sweet as a flower, not if we
could live years and years equal in
number to the tides that have ebbed
and flowed, counting backwards four
years to every day and night, backward
still till we found out which came first,
the night or the day.
The scarlet-dotted fly knows nothing of
the names of the grasses that grow here
where the sward nears the sea, and
thinking of him I have decided not to
wilfully seek to learn any more of their
names either. My big grass book I

94

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

have left at home, and the dust is set-
tling on the gold of the binding. I have
picked a handful this morning of which
I know nothing. I will sit here on the
turf and the scarlet-dotted flies shall
pass over me, as if I too were but a
grass. I will not think, I will be uncon-
scious, I will live.— 'Field and Hedge-
row ' : The July Grass.

LISTEN ! That was the low sound
of a summer wavelet striking
the uncovered rock over there
beneath in the green sea. All things
that are beautiful are found by chance,
like everything that is good. Here by
me is a praying-rug, just wide enough
to kneel on, of the richest gold inwoven
with crimson. All the Sultans of the
East never had such beauty as that to
kneel on. It is, indeed, too beautiful to
kneel on, for the life in these golden
flowers must not be broken down even

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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

for that purpose. They must not be
defaced, not a stem bent; it is more
reverent not to kneel on them, for this
carpet prays itself. I will sit by it and
let it pray for me. It is so common, the
bird's-foot lotus, it grows everywhere;
yet if I purposely searched for days I
should not have found a plot like this,
so rich, so golden, so glowing with sun-
shine. You might pass by it in one
stride, yet it is worthy to be thought of
for a week and remembered for a year. —
* Field and Hedgerow ' : The July Grass.

I KNOW nothing to which the wind
has not some happy use. Is there
a grain of dust so small the wind
shall not find it out? ground in the
mill-wheel of the centuries, the iron
of the distant mountain floats like
gossamer, and is drunk up as dew by
leaf and living lung. — ' Field and Hedge-
row': Winds of Heaven.

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OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

ALL things reposed but man,
and man is so busy with his
L vulgar aims that it quite
dawns upon many people as a wonder-
ful surprise how still nature is on a
Sunday morning. Nature is absolutely
still every day of the week, and proceeds
with the most absolute indifference to
days and dates.—' Field and Hedgerow ' :
The Country Sunday.

THE beautiful swallows, be ten-
der to them, for they symbol
all that is best in nature and
all that is best in our hearts. — 'Field
and Hedgerow': Swallow-Time.

THE light is never the same on a
landscape many minutes to-
gether, as all know who have
tried, ever so crudely, to fix the fleeting
expression of the earth with pencil. It
is ever changing, and in the same way

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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

as you walk by the hedges day by day
there is always some fresh circumstance
of nature, the interest of which in a
measure blots out the past. — ' Field and
Hedgerow ' : Among the Nuts.

COULD imperial Rome have only
grown sufficient wheat in Italy
to have fed her legions, Caesar
would still be master of three-fourths of
the earth. Rome thought more in her
latter days of grapes and oysters and
mullets, that change colour as they die,
and singing girls and flute-playing, and
cynic verse of Horace — anything rather
than corn. Rome is no more, and the
lords of the world are they who have
mastership of wheat— 'Field and Hedge-
row': Walks in the Wheatfields.

DESPOTS grind half the human
race, and despots stronger
than man— plague, pestilence,
and famine— grind the whole ; and yet

98

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

the world increases, and the green wheat
of the human heart is not to be trampled
out— ' Field and Hedgerow': Walks in
the Wheatfields.

THE gallows at the cross-roads
is gone, but the workhouse
stands, and custom, that
tyrant of the mind, has inured us (to use
an old word) to its existence in our
midst. Apart from any physical suffer-
ing, let us only consider the slow agony
of the poor old reaper when he feels his
lusty arm wither, and of the grey bowed
wife as they feel themselves drifting like
a ship ashore to that stony waiting-room.
For it is a waiting-room till the grave
receives them. Economically, too, the
workhouse is a heavy loss and drag.
Could we, then, see the tithe barn filled
again with golden wheat for this purpose
of help to humanity, it might be a great
and wonderful good. With this truth

99

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

to feed the starving and clothe the
naked ; with the tenth to give the little
children a midday meal at the school —
that would be natural and true. In the
course of time, as the land laws lessen
their grip, and the people take possession
of the earth on which they stand, it is
more than probable that something of
this kind will really come about. It
would be onlysimplejustice after somany
centuries— it takes so many hundreds
of years to get even that. — ' Field and
Hedgerow': Walks in the Wheatfields.

HE who has got the sense of
beauty in his eye can find it
in things as they really are,
and needs no stagey time of artificial
pastorals to furnish him with a sham
nature. Idealise to the full, but idealise
the real, else the picture is a sham.—
'Field and Hedgerow': Walks in the
Wheatfields.

ioo

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

A BARNYARD chanticleer and
his family afford more matter
than the best book ever
written. His coral red comb, his sil-
very scaled legs, his reddened feathers,
and his fiery attitudes, his jolly crow,
and all his ways— there 's an illustrated
pamphlet, there's a picture-book for
you in one creature only ! Reckon his
family, the tender little chicks, the
enamelled eggs, the feeding every day,
the roosting, the ever-present terror of
the red wood-dog (as the gypsies call the
fox), here 's a Chronicon Nurembergense
with a thousand woodcuts; a whole
history.— 'Field and Hedgerow ' : Walks
in the Wheatfields.

THE sweet violets bloom afresh
every spring on the mounds,
the cowslips come, and the
happy note of the cuckoo, the wild rose
of midsummer, and the golden wheat of

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THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

August. It is the same beautiful old
country always new. Neither the iron
engine nor the wooden plough alter it
one iota, and the love of it rises as con-
stantly in our hearts as the coming of
the leaves. — 'Field and Hedgerow':
Walks in the Wheatfields.

SUCH is the wonderful power of
plants. To any one who takes
a delight in wild-flowers, some or
other of the earth is always becoming
consecrated.— i Field and Hedgerow':
Locality and Nature.

THE experience of the rudest
country rustic is not to be de-
spised ; an observation is an
observation, whoever makes it ; there
has been an air of too much science in
the affected decision of our forefathers'
wisdom.— ' Field and Hedgerow': Lo-
cality and Nature.

102

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

ENGLISH folk don't 'cotton' to
their poverty at all ; they don't
eat humble-pie with a relish ;
they resent being- poor and despised.
Foreign folk seem to take to it quite
naturally ; an Englishman, somehow or
other, always feels that he is wronged.
He is injured ; he has not got his rights.
To me it seems the most curious thing
possible that well-to-do people should
expect the poor to be delighted with
their condition. I hope they never will
be; an evil day that— if it ever came —
for the Anglo-Saxon race.— 'Field and
Hedgerow': Cottage Ideas.

THE well-to-do are educated,
they have travelled, if not in
their ideas, they are more or
less cosmopolitan. In the cottager you
get to ' bed-rock ' as the Americans say ;
there 's the foundation. Character runs
upwards not downwards. It is not the

103

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

nature of the aristocrat that permeates
the cottager, but the nature of the cot-
tager that permeates the aristocrat.
The best of us are polished cottagers.
Scratch deep enough, and you come to
that ; so that to know a people, go to
the cottage, and not to the mansion.—
'Field and Hedgerow': Cottage Ideas.

NATURE would go on though
under the thumb of the north
wind. Poor folk came out of
the towns to gather ivy-leaves for sale
in the streets to make button-holes.
Many people think the ivy-leaf has a
pleasant shape ; it was used of old time
among the Greeks and Romans to
decorate the person at joyous festivals.
The ivy is frequently mentioned in the
classic poets. Not so with the country
woman in the villages to-day, ground
down in constant dread of that hateful
workhouse system of which I can find

104

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

no words to express my detestation.
They tell their daughters never to put
ivy-leaves in their hair or brooch, be-
cause 'they puts it on the dead paupers
in the unions, and the lunatics in the
'sylums.' Such an association took
away all the beauty of the ivy-leaf.
There is nature in their hearts, you
see, although they are under the polar
draught of poverty.—' Field and Hedge-
row ' : The Time of Year.

THERE are never two works
of equal beauty of any kind,
just as there are never two
moments of equal pleasure: seize the
one you have, and make much of it, for
such a moment will never return. — ' Field
and Hedgerow' : Nature in the Louvre.

THE sun rolls on in the far dome
of heaven, and now day, and
now night sweeps with alter-
nate bands over the surface of hill, and

105

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

wood, and sea ; the sea beats in endless
waves, which first began to undulate a
thousand, thousand years ago, starting
from the other rim of Time ; the green
leaves repeat the beauty that gladdened
man in ancient days. But for them-
selves they are, and not for us. Their
glory fills the mind with rapture, but for
a while, and it learns that they are, like
carven idols, wholly careless and in-
different to our fate. Then is the valley
incomplete, and the void sad ! Its hills
speak of death as well as of life, and we
know that for man there is nothing on
earth really but man ; the human species
owns and possesses nothing but its
species. When I saw this I turned with
threefold concentration of desire and
love towards that expression of hope
which is called beauty, such as is worked
in marble here. For I think beauty is
truthfully an expression of hope, and
that is why it is so enthralling— because

1 06

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

while the heart is absorbed in its con-
templation, unconscious but powerful,
hope is filling the breast. So powerful
is it as to banish for the time all care,
and to make this life seem the life of
the immortals.— ' Field and Hedgerow':
Nature in the Louvre.

OUR English landscape wants
no gardening: it cannot be
gardened. The least inter-
ference kills it. The beauty of English
woodland and country is in its detail.
There is nothing empty and unclothed.
If the clods are left a little while un-
disturbed in the fields, weeds spring up
and wild-flowers bloom upon them. To
the hedge cut and trimmed, lo ! the
blue-bells flower the more, and a yet
fresher green buds forth upon the twigs.
Never was there a garden like the
meadow; there is not an inch of the
meadow in early summer without a

107

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

flower. Old walls, as we saw just now,
are not left without a fringe, on the top
of the hardest brick wall, on the sapless
tiles, on slates, stonecrop takes hold
and becomes a cushion of yellow bloom.
Nature is a miniature painter and
handles a delicate brush, the tip of
which touches the tiniest spot and
leaves something living. The park has
indeed its larger lines, its broad open
sweep, and gradual slope, to which the
eye, accustomed to small enclosures,
requires time to adjust itself. These
left to themselves are beautiful ; they are
the surface of the earth, which is always
true to itself and needs no banks nor
artificial hollows. The earth is right
and the tree is right; trim either and
all is wrong: the deer will not fit to
them then.— 'Field and Hedgerow':
An English Deer-Park.

io3

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

NO one else seems to have seen
the sparkle on the brook, or
heard the music at the hatch,
or to have felt back through the cen-
turies ; and when I try to describe these
things to them, they look at me with
stolid incredulity. No one seems to
understand how I got food from the
clouds, nor what there was in the night,
nor why it is not so good to look at it
out of window. They turn their faces
away from me, so that perhaps after all
I was mistaken, and there never was
any such place nor any such meadows,
and I was never there. And perhaps
in course of time I shall find out also,
when I pass away physically, that as a
matter of fact there never was any
earth.— " Field and Hedgerow': My Old
Village.

109

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

IF a man's work that he has done
all the days of his life could be
collected and piled up around him
in visible shape, what a vast mound
there would be beside some! If each
act or stroke was represented, say by
a brick, John Brown would have stood
the day before his ending by the side
of a monument as high as a pyramid.
Then if in front of him could be placed
the sum and product of his labour, the
profit to himself, he could have held it
in his clenched hand like a nut, and no
one would have seen it. Our modern
people think they train their sons to
strength by football, and rowing, and
jumping, and what are called athletic
exercises ; all of which it is the fashion
now to preach as very noble, and likely
to lead to the goodness of the race.
Certainly feats are accomplished and
records are beaten, but there is no real
strength gained, no hardihood built up.

no

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

Without hardihood it is of little avail
to be able to jump an inch farther than
somebody else. Hardihood is the true
test, hardihood is the ideal, and not
these caperings or ten minutes' spurts.
Now, the way they made the boy John
Brown hardy was to let him roll about
on the ground with naked legs and bare
head from morn till night, from June till
December, from January till June. The
rain fell on his head, and he played in
wet grass to his knees. Dry bread and
a little lard was his chief food. He
went to work while he was still a child.
At half-past three in the morning he
was on his way to the farm stables,
there to help feed the cart-horses, which
used to be done with great care very
early in the morning. The carter's whip
used to sting his legs, and sometimes
he felt the butt. At fifteen he was no
taller than the sons of well-to-do people
at eleven; he scarcely seemed to grow

in

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

at all till he was eighteen or twenty,
and even then very slowly, but at last
became a tall big man. That slouching
walk, with knees always bent, diminished
his height to appearance ; he really was
the full size, and every inch of his frame
had been slowly welded together by this
ceaseless work, continual life in the
open air, and coarse hard food. This is
what makes a man hardy. This is what
makes a man able to stand almost any-
thing, and gives a power of endurance
that can never be obtained by any
amount of gymnastic training. — 'Field
and Hedgerow': My Old Village.

THE blackbird's whistle is very
human, like a human being
playing the flute ; an uncertain
player, now drawing forth a bar of a
beautiful melody— then losing it again.
He does not know what quiver or what
turn his note will take before it ends;

112

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

the note leads him and completes itself.
It is a song which strives to express
the singer's keen delight, the singer's
exquisite appreciation of the loveliness of
the days ; the golden glory of the meadow,
the light, the luxurious shadows, the
indolent clouds reclining on their azure
couch. Such thoughts can only be ex-
pressed in fragments, like a sculptor's
chips, thrown off as the inspiration seizes
him, not mechanically sawn to a set
line. Now and again the blackbird feels
the beauty of the time, the large white
daisy stars, the grass with yellow-dusted
tips, the air which comes so softly un-
perceived by any precedent rustle of
the hedge, the water which runs slower,
held awhile by rootlet, flag, and forget-
me-not. He feels the beauty of the
time, and he must say it. His notes
come like wild-flowers, not sown in
order. The sunshine opens and shuts
the stops of his instrument. — ' The

113 h

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

Toilers of the Field ' : * The Coming of
Summer.

PASS when you may, this little
orchard has always something,
because it is left to itself— I
had written neglected, I struck the
word out, for this is not neglect, this
is true attention, to leave it to itself, so
that the young trees trail over the
bushes and stay till the berries fall of
their own over-ripeness, if perchance
spared by the birds; so that the dead
brown leaves lie and are not swept
away unless the wind pleases; so that
all things follow their own course and
bent.— 'The Toilers of the Field': The
Coming of Summer.

A JUNE rose. Something caught
my eye on the top of the high
hawthorn hedge beside the
Brighton road one evening as it was

1 ' The Toilers of the Field ' : Longmans, Green & Co.

114

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

growing dusk, and on looking again
there was a spray of briar in flower,
two roses in full bloom and out of reach,
and one spray of growing buds. So it
is ever with the June rose. It is found
unexpectedly, and when you are not
looking for it. It is a gift, not a dis-
covery, or anything earned — a gift like
love and happiness. With ripening
grasses the rose comes, and the rose
is summer: till then it is spring. — 'The
Toilers of the Field': The Coming of
Summer.

THE lions in Trafalgar Square
are to me the centre of London.
By those lions began my Lon-
don work; from them, as spokes from
the middle of a wheel, radiate my
London thoughts. Standing by them
and looking south you have in front
the Houses of Parliament, where resides
the mastership of England; at your

115

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

back is the National Gallery— that is
art; and farther back the British
Museum— books. To the right lies
the wealth and luxury of the West
End; to the left the roar and labour,
the craft and gold, of the City. For
themselves, they are the only monument
in this vast capital worthy of a second
visit as a monument. Over the entire
area covered by the metropolis there
does not exist another work of art in
the open air. There are many struc-
tures and things, no other art. The
outlines of the great animals, the bold
curves and firm touches of the master
hand, the deep indents, as it were, of
his thumb on the plastic metal, all the
technique and grasp written there, is
legible at a glance. Then comes the
pose and expression of the whole, the
calm strength in repose, the indifference
to little things, the resolute view of
great ones. Lastly, the soul of the

1x6

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

maker, the spirit which was taken from
nature, abides in the massive bronze.
These lions are finer than those that
crouch in the cages at the Zoological
Gardens ; these are truer and more real,
and, besides, these are lions to whom
has been added the heart of a man.
Nothing disfigures them ; smoke and,
what is much worse, black rain — rain
which washes the atmosphere of the
suspended mud— does not affect them
in the least. If the choke-damp of fog
obscures them, it leaves no stain on the
design ; if the surfaces be stained, the
idea made tangible in metal is not.
They are no more touched than Time
itself by the alternations of the seasons.
The only noble open-air work of native
art in the four-million city, they rest
there supreme and are the centre. Did
such a work exist now in Venice, what
immense folios would be issued about
it! All the language of the studios

117

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

would be huddled together in piled-up
and running-over laudation, and curses
on our insular swine-eyes that could
not see it. I have not been to Venice,
therefore I do not pretend to a know-
ledge of that mediaeval potsherd; this
I do know, that in all the endless
pictures on the walls of the galleries
in London, year after year exposed and
disappearing like snow somewhere un-
seen, never has there appeared one with
such a subject as this. Weak, feeble,
mosaic, gimcrack, coloured tiles, and
far-fetched compound monsters, artifi-
cial as the graining on a deal front
door, they cannot be compared; it is
the ginger-bread gilt on a circus car
to the column of a Greek temple. This
is pure open air, grand as Nature her-
self, because it is Nature with, as I
say, the heart of a man added.
But if any one desire the meretricious
painting of warm light and cool yet

118

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

not hard shade, the effect of colour,
with the twitching of triangles, the
spangles glittering, and all the arrange-
ment contrived to take the eye, then he
can have it here as well as noble
sculpture. Ascend the steps to the
National Gallery, and stand looking
over the balustrade down across the
square in summer hours. Let the sun
have sloped enough to throw a slant
of shadow outward; let the fountains
splash whose bubbles restless speak
of rest and leisure, idle and dreamy;
let the blue-tinted pigeons nod their
heads walking, and anon crowd through
the air to the roof-tops. Shadow upon
the one side, bright light upon the
other, azure above and swallows. Ever
rolling the human stream flows, mostly
on the south side yonder, near enough
to be audible, but toned to bearableness.
A stream of human hearts, every atom
a living mind filled with what thoughts ?

119

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

—a stream that ran through Rome
once, but has altered its course and
wears away the banks here now and
triturates its own atoms, the hearts, to
dust in the process. Yellow omnibuses
and red cabs, dark shining carriages,
chestnut horses, all rushing, and by
their motion mixing their colours so
that the commonness of it disappears
and the hues remain, a streak drawn
in the groove of the street— dashed
hastily with thick camel's hair. In the
midst the calm lions, dusky, unmoved,
full always of the one grand idea that
was infused into them. So full of it
that the golden sun and the bright
wall of the eastern houses, the shade
that is slipping towards them, the sweet
swallows and the azure sky, all the
human stream holds of wealth and
power and coroneted panels — nature,
man, and city— pass as naught. Mind
is stronger than matter. The soul alone

120

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

stands when the sun sinks, when the
shade is universal night, when the van's
wheels are silent and the dust rises no
more.

At summer noontide, when the day sur-
rounds us and it is bright light even in
the shadow, I like to stand by one of the
lions and yield to the old feeling. The
sunshine glows on the dusky creature,
as it seems, not on the surface, but
under the skin, as if it came up from
out of the limb. The roar of the rolling
wheels sinks and becomes distant as the
sound of a waterfall when dreams are
coming. All the abundant human life is
smoothed and levelled, the abruptness
of the individuals lost in the flowing
current, like separate flowers drawn
along in a border, like music heard so
far off that the notes are molten and the
theme only remains. The abyss of the
sky over and the ancient sun are near.
They only are close at hand, they and

121

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

immortal thought. When the yellow
Syrian lions stood in old time of Egypt,
then, too, the sunlight gleamed on the
eyes of men, as now this hour on mine.
The same consciousness of light, the
same sun, but the eyes that saw it and
mine, how far apart ! The immense lion
here beside me expresses larger nature
— cosmos — the ever-existent thought
which sustains the world. Massiveness
exalts the mind till the vast roads of
space which the sun tramples are as an
arm's-length. Such a moment cannot
endure long; gradually the roar deep-
ens, the current resolves into individuals,
the houses return— it is only a square.
But a square potent. For London is
the only real place in the world. The
cities turn towards London as young
partridges run to their mother. The
cities know that they are not real.
They are only houses and wharves, and
bricks and stucco; only outside. The

122

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

minds of all men in them, merchants,
artists, thinkers, are bent on London.
Thither they go as soon as they can.
San Francisco thinks London ; so does
St. Petersburg-.

Men amuse themselves in Paris; they
work in London. Gold is made abroad,
but London has a hook and line on
every napoleon and dollar, pulling- the
round discs hither. A house is not a
dwelling- if a man's heart be elsewhere.
Now, the heart of the world is in London,
and the cities with the simulacrum of
man in them are empty. They are
moving images only; stand here, and
you are real.

123

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

MY CHAFFINCH

HIS hours he spends upon a
fragrant fir ;
His merry ' chink,' his happy
' Kiss me, dear,'
Each moment sounded, keeps the copse
astir.
Loudly he challenges his rivals near,
Anon aslant down to the ground he

springs,
Like to a sunbeam made of coloured
wings.

The firm and solid azure of the ceil
That struck by hand would give a
hollow sound,
A dome turned perfect by the sun's
great wheel,

124

OF RICHARD JEFFERIES

Whose edges rest upon the hills
around,
Rings many a mile with blue enamelled

wall ;
His fir-tree is the centre of it all.

A lichened cup he set against the side
High up this mast, earth-stepped,
that could not fail,
But swung a little as a ship might ride,
Keeping an easy balance in the gale ;
Slow-heaving like a gladiator's breast,
Whose strength in combat feels an idle
rest.

Whether the cuckoo or the chaffinch
most
Do triumph in the issuing of their
song?
I say not this, but many a swelling boast
They throw each at the other all day
long.
Soon as the nest had cradled eggs a-twin
The jolly squirrel climbed to look therein.

125

THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS

Adown the lane athwart this pleasant

wood
The broad-winged butterflies their

solace sought ;
A green-necked pheasant in the sunlight

stood,
Nor could the rushes hide him as he

thought.
A humble-bee through fern and thistle

made
A search for lowly flowers in the shade.

A thing of many wanderings, and loss,

Like to Ulysses on his poplar raft,
His treasure hid beneath the tunnelled
moss
Lest that a thief his labour steal with
craft,
Up the round hill, sheep-dotted, was his

way,
Zigzagging where some new adventure
lay.

126

OF .RICHARD JEFFERIES

4 My life and soul,' as if he were a Greek,
His heart was Grecian in his green-
wood fane ;

1 My life and soul,' through all the sunny
week
The chaffinch sang with beating heart
amain.

'The humble-bee the wide wood-world
may roam ;

One feather's breadth I shall not stir
from home.'

No note he took of what the swallows
said

About the firing of some evil gun,
Nor if the butterflies were blue or red,

For all his feelings were intent in one.
The loving soul, a-thrill in all his nerves,
A life immortal as a man's deserves.

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE
Printers to Her Majesty

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

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