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235
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
228
I
ramble
through
a
village
in
Gloucestershire,
a
village
which
seems
forsaken
in
this
drowsy
warmth
of
the
afternoon.
The
houses
of
grey
stone
are
old
and
beautiful,
telling
of
a
time
when
Englishmen
knew
how
to
build
whether
for
rich
or
poor;
the
gardens
glow
with
flowers,
and
the
air
is
delicately
sweet.
At
the
village
end,
I
come
into
a
lane,
which
winds
upwards
between
grassy
slopes,
to
turf
and
bracken
and
woods
of
noble
beech.
Here
I
am
upon
a
spur
of
the
Cotswolds,
and
before
me
spreads
the
wide
vale
of
Evesham,
with
its
ripening
crops,
its
fruiting
orchards,
watered
by
sacred
Avon.
Beyond,
softly
blue,
the
hills
of
Malvern.
On
the
branch
hard
by
warbles
a
little
bird,
glad
in
his
leafy
solitude.
A
rabbit
jumps
through
the
fern.
There
sounds
the
laugh
of
a
woodpecker
from
the
copse
in
yonder
hollow.
.
.
.
In
the
falling
of
a
summer
night,
I
walk
by
Ullswater.
The
sky
is
still
warm
with
the
afterglow
of
sunset,
a
dusky
crimson
smouldering
above
the
dark
mountain
line.
Below
me
spreads
a
long
reach
of
the
lake,
steel-
grey
between
its
dim
colourless
shores.
In
the
profound
stillness,
the
trotting
of
a
horse
beyond
the
water
sounds
strangely
near;
it
serves
only
to
make
more
sensible
the
repose
of
Nature
in
this
her
sanctuary.
I
feel
a
solitude
unutterable,
yet
nothing
akin
to
desolation;
the
heart
of
the
land
I
love
seems
to
beat
in
the
silent
night
gathering
around
me;
amid
things
eternal,
I
touch
the
familiar
and
the
kindly
earth.
Moving,
I
step
softly,
as
though
my
footfall
were
an
irreverence.
A
turn
in
the
road,
and
there
is
wafted
to
me
a
faint
perfume,
that
of
meadow-sweet.
Then
I
see
a
light
glimmering
in
the
farmhouse
window--a
little
ray
against
the
blackness
of
the
great
hillside,
below
which
the
water
sleeps.
.
.
.
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