It would
have mattered not at all if his head had been clear; earth, sky, and sun
were nothing to him; he knew the footpath, and saw that the day would be
fine and hot, and that was sufficient for him, because his eyes had never
been opened.
The reaper had risen early to his labour, but the birds had preceded him
hours. Before the sun was up the swallows had left their beams in the
cowshed and twittered out into the air. The rooks and wood-pigeons and
doves had gone to the corn, the blackbird to the stream, the finch to the
hedgerow, the bees to the heath on the hills, the humble-bees to the
clover in the plain. Butterflies rose from the flowers by the footpath,
and fluttered before him to and fro and round and back again to the place
whence they had been driven. Goldfinches tasting the first thistledown
rose from the corner where the thistles grew thickly. A hundred sparrows
came rushing up into the hedge, suddenly filling the boughs with brown
fruit; they chirped and quarrelled in their talk, and rushed away again
back to the corn as he stepped nearer. The boughs were stripped of their
winged brown berries as quickly as they had grown. Starlings ran before
the cows feeding in the aftermath, so close to their mouths as to seem in
danger of being licked up by their broad tongues.
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