yew-stems

Updated: May 28, 2025

How good it is to exercise in all its range the fine mechanism of the body, suffering each part of it to indulge its own hunger after beauty; to feel the texture of petals, and draw the long grasses through the fingers; to breathe an air laden with the scent of blossoms, passing from uplands fragrant with bean-flowers into untilled regions odorous with pines; to hear the birds' chorus at sunrise and the distant sound of reaping; to see innumerable marvels; the belts of clover mantling wine-dark in the wind; the poppies in the standing corn, the carmine yew-stems on the downs; above you the soft grey clouds delicately floating; below you, as the day declines, some distant lonely water emerging in its glory to be the mirror and refuge of all heaven's light; to remember the gorse and broom and look forward to the royal purple of the heather all this is a consummation of pure life, a high, sensuous pleasure penetrating to the inmost soul, and of such exceeding price that to disdain its offerings or to pass incurious before them, is to live in the blindness of the tribe of Genseric.

O. M. (Ormonde Maddock) Dalton - Apologia Diffidentis