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Spring in England and Flanders
Very soon the earliest primroses will be coming out in woods wherever
they have been sheltered from the north. They will grow bolder as the
days go by, and spread and come all down the slopes of sunny hills.
Then the anemones will come, like a shy pale people, one of the tribes
of the elves, who dare not leave the innermost deeps of the wood: in
those days all the trees will be in leaf, the bluebells will follow,
and certain fortunate woods will shelter such myriads of them that the
bright fresh green of the beech trees will flash between two blues,
the blue of the sky and the deeper blue of the bluebells. Later the
violets come, and such a time as this is the perfect time to see
England: when the cuckoo is heard and he surprises his hearers; when
evenings are lengthening out and the bat is abroad again; and all the
flowers are out and all the birds sing. At such a time not only Nature
smiles but our quiet villages and grave old spires wake up from winter
in the mellow air and wear their centuries lightly. At such a time you
might come just at evening on one of those old villages in a valley
and find it in the mood to tell you the secret of the ages that it hid
and treasured there before the Normans came. Who knows? For they are
very old, very wise, very friendly; they might speak to you one warm
evening. If you went to them after great suffering they might speak to
you; after nights and nights of shelling over in France, they might
speak to you and you might hear them clearly.
It would be a long, long story that they would tell, all about the
ages; and it would vary wonderfully little, much less perhaps than we
think; and the repetitions rambling on and on in the evening, as the
old belfry spoke and the cottages gathered below it, might sound so
soothing after the boom of shells that perhaps you would nearly sleep.
And then with one's memory tired out by the war one might never
remember the long story they told, when the belfry and the
brown-roofed houses all murmured at evening, might never remember even
that they had spoken all through that warm spring and evening. We may
have heard them speak and forgotten that they have spoken. Who knows?
We are at war, and see so many strange things: some we must forget,
some we must remember; and we cannot choose which.
To turn from Kent to Flanders is to turn to a time of mourning through
all seasons alike. Spring there brings out no leaf on myriad oaks, nor
the haze of green that floats like a halo above the heads of the birch
trees, that stand with their fairylike trunks haunting the deeps of
the woods. For miles and miles and miles summer ripens no crops, leads
out no maidens laughing in the moonlight, and brings no harvest home.
When Autumn looks on orchards in all that region of mourning he looks
upon barren trees that will never blossom again. Winter drives in no
sturdy farmers at evening to sit before cheery fires, families meet
not at Christmas, and the bells are dumb in belfries; for all by which
a man might remember his home has been utterly swept away: has been
swept away to make a maniacal dancing ground on which a murderous
people dance to their death led by a shallow, clever, callous,
imperial clown.
There they dance to their doom till their feet shall find the
precipice that was prepared for them on the day that they planned the
evil things they have done.
Read next: Tale 15 - The Nightmare Countries
Read previous: Tale 13 - Weeds and Wire
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