Strolling bushrangers, if
they escape being pelleted with lead by the enthusiastic rabbit
hunters who bang suddenly among thickets, will find many vistas of
loveliness. All summer long we are imprisoned in foliage, locked up
in a leafy embrace. But when the leaves have shredded away and the
solid barriers of green stand revealed as only thin fringes of
easily penetrable woodland, the eye moves with surprise over these
wide reaches of colour and freedom. Beyond the old ruined farmhouse
past the gnarled and rheumatic apple tree is that dimpled path that
runs across fields, the short cut down to the harbour. The stiff
frozen plumes of ghostly goldenrod stand up pale and powdery along
the way. How many tints of brown and fawn and buff in the withered
grasses--some as feathery and translucent as a gauze scarf, as
nebulous as those veilings Robin Herrick was so fond of--his mention
of them gives an odd connotation to a modern reader--
So looks Anthea, when in bed she lyes,
Orecome, or halfe betray'd by Tiffanies.
Our fields now have the rich, tawny colour of a panther's hide.
Along the little path are scattered sumac leaves, dark scarlet. It
is as though Summer had been wounded by the hunter Jack Frost, and
had crept away down that secret track, leaving a trail of
bloodstains behind her.
This tract of placid and enchanted woodland, field, brake, glen, and
coppice, has always seemed to us so amazingly like the magical
Forest of Arden that we believe Shakespeare must have written "As
You Like It" somewhere near here.
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