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THE SUSSEX DOWNS 211
nothing. And as Mr. Dudeney,the South Down shepherd said, " the closer you lie to the turf the more you're apt to see things." Besides the mind sometimes is better for being spread and bleached. It wants the simplest experience and simplest delights. Hear Richard Jefferies :
" There, alone, I went down to the sea. I stood where the foam came to my feet, and looked out over the sunlit waters. The great earth bearing the richness of the harvest, and its hills golden with corn, was at my back; its strength and firmness under me. The great sun shone above, the wide sea was before me, the wind came sweet and strong from the waves ... I rubbed out some of the wheat in my hands, I took up a piece of clod and crumbled it in my fingers—it was a joy to touch it—I held my hand so that I could see the sunlight gleam on the slightly soft surface of the skin. The earth and sun were like my flesh and blood, and the air of the sea life."
The literary pilgrim will not fail to seek the grave of Jefferies at Broadwater. He died at Goring, hard by, in 1887. " If I had my own way after death," wrote Jefferies in " The Story of my Heart," " I would be burned on a pyre of pine-wood, open to the air, and placed on the summit of the hills. Then let my ashes be scattered abroad—not collected in an urn—freely sown wide and broadcast." |
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