The result of these perfect days, full of life and freshness, with all the loveliness and without the languors of spring, is to produce in me a perfectly inconsequent mood of happiness, which is better than any amount of philosophical consolation. The air, the breeze, the flying hour are all full of delight. Everything is touched with a fine savour and quality, whether it be the wide view over the dappled plain, the blue waters of the lonely dyke, the old farm-house blinking pleasantly among its barns and outbuildings, the tall church-tower that you see for miles over the flat, the busy cawing of rooks in the village grove; the very people that one meets wear a smiling and friendly air, from the old labourer trudging slowly home, to the jolly, smooth-faced ploughboy riding a big horse, clanking and plodding down the highway. One sees the world as it was meant to be made; a life in the open air, labour among the wide fields, seems the joyful lot of man. The very food that one eats by the quick-set thorn on the edge of a dyke, where the fish poise and hang in dark pools, has a finer savour, and is like a sacrament of peace; hour after hour, from morning to sunset, one can range without weariness and without care, one’s thoughts reduced to a mere flow of gentle perceptions, murmuring along like a clear stream. Pleasant, too, is the return home when one swings in at the familiar gate; and then comes the quiet solitary evening when one recounts the hoarded store of delicate impressions. Then follow hours of dreamless sleep, till one wakes again upon a bright world, with the thrushes fluting in the shrubbery and the morning sun flooding the room.
LVI
It was by what we clumsily call chance but really by what I am learning to perceive to be the subtlest and prettiest surprises of the Power that walks beside us, that I found myself in Ely yesterday morning—the first real day of summer. The air was full of sunshine, like golden dust, and all the plants had taken a leap forward in the night, and were unfurling their crumpled flags as speedily as they might. I came vaguely down to the river, guided by the same good spirit, and there at the boat-wharf I found a little motor-launch lying, which could be hired for the day. I took it, like the Lady of Shalott; but I did not write my name on the prow, because it had already some silly, darting kind of name. A mild, taciturn man took charge of my craft; and without delay we clicked and gurgled out into the stream.