Lud-in-the-Mist

by Hope Mirrlees

Hence sprang leisure, that fissure in the solid masonry of works and days in which take seed a myriad curious little flowers — good cookery, and shining mahogany, and a fashion in dress, that, like a baroque bust, is fantastic through sheer wittiness, and porcelain shepherdesses, and the humors, and endless jokes — in fact, the toys, material and spiritual, of civilization.

All the world over we are very conscious of the trees in spring, and watch with delight how the network of twigs on the wych-elms is becoming spangled with tiny puce flowers, like little beetles caught in a spider’s web, and how little lemon-colored buds are studding the thorn. While as to the long red-gold buds of the horse-chestnuts — they come bursting out with a sort of a visual bang. And now the beech is hatching its tiny perfectly-formed leaves — and all the other trees in turn. And at first we delight in the diversity of the colors and shapes of the various young leaves — noting how those of the birch are like a swarm of green bees, and those of the lime so transparent that they are stained black with the shadow of those above and beneath them, and how those of the elm diaper the sky with the prettiest pattern, and are the ones that grow the most slowly. Then we cease to note their idiosyncrasies, and they merge, till autumn, into one solid, unobtrusive green curtain for throwing into relief brighter and sharper things. There is nothing so dumb as a tree in full leaf.

Pride and resentment are not indigenous to the human heart; and perhaps it is due to the gardener’s innate love of the exotic that we take such pains to make them thrive.

And this is but another proof that the Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let all readers of books take warning! And with this final exhortation this book shall close.