over slopes of english hills looking south in the time of violets, evening was falling.
shadows at edges of woods moved, and then merged in the gloaming.
the bat, like a shadow himself, finding that spring was come, slipped from the dark of the wood as far as a clump of beech trees and fluttered back again on his wonderful quiet wings.
pairing pigeons were home.
very young rabbits stole out to gaze at the calm still world. they came out as the stars come. at one time they were not there, and then you saw them, but you did not see them come.
towering clouds to the west built palaces, cities and mountains; bastions of rose and precipices of gold; giants went home over them draped in mauve by steep rose-pink ravines into emerald-green empires. turbulences of colour broke out above the departed sun; giants merged into mountains, and cities became seas, and new processions of other fantastic things sailed by. but the chalk slopes facing south smiled on with the same calm light, as though every blade of grass gathered a ray from the gloaming. all the hills faced the evening with that same quiet glow, which faded softly as the air grew colder; and the first star appeared.
voices came up in the hush, clear from the valley, and ceased. a light was lit, like a spark, in a distant window: more stars appeared and the woods were all dark now, and shapes even on the hill slopes began to grow indistinct.
home by a laneway in the dim, still evening a girl was going, singing the marseillaise.
in france where the downs in the north roll away without hedges, as though they were great free giants that man had never confined, as though they were stretching their vast free limbs in the evening, the same light was smiling and glimmering softly away.
a road wound over the downs and away round one of their shoulders. a hush lay over them as though the giants slept, or as though they guarded in silence their ancient, wonderful history.
the stillness deepened and the dimness of twilight; and just before colours fade, while shapes can still be distinguished, there came by the road a farmer leading his norman horse. high over the horse’s withers his collar pointed with brass made him fantastic and huge and strange to see in the evening.
they moved together through that mellow light towards where unseen among the clustered downs the old french farmer’s house was sheltered away.
he was going home at evening humming “god save the king.”
