I can give you his name if you
doubt me--a great name, too. And he would not deny the impeachment. I am
not prepared to endorse his idea of good taste; but I hate black. "Why
should I wear black for the guests of God?" asked Ruskin. And there is no
answer. Perhaps among the consequences of the war there will be a
repudiation of this false code of taste.
ON A HAWTHORN HEDGE
As I turned into the lane that climbs the hillside to the cottage under the
high beech woods I was conscious of a sort of mild expectation that I could
not explain. It was late evening. Venus, who looks down with such calm
splendour upon this troubled earth in these summer nights, had disappeared,
but the moon had not yet risen. The air was heavy with those rich odours
which seem so much more pungent by night than by day--those odours of
summer eves that Keats has fixed for ever in the imagination:--
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet.
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs;
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn.
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