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Sweet Mace A Sussex Legend of the Iron Times
Description:
Excerpt
How Gil Carr Heard a Concert in Spring.
âToo soon for sweet maceâa bunch for sweet Mace,â said Gil Carr as he bent down amongst the sedges to pick the bright blue scorpion grass, its delicate flowers relieved with yellow, âso she must have forget-me-not. I wonder whether sheâll keep some when Iâm far away.â
He stopped and smiled and listened, for the morning concert was beginning two hundred and fifty years ago, at four oâclock in the morning and down in a Sussex valley near the sea.
A long while since? Nay, a mere instant of time in this worldâs life; and spite of all some writers say, and though we now have steam and electric current to our hand, two hundred and fifty years ago men thought and spoke the sameâperhaps a little more roughly than they do now.
There was the pleasant gurgle of water at Gil Carrâs feet, and as he drew back from where the stream rippled and swirled, and a trout darted into sight, saw him, and flashed away beneath the shelter of a jutting stone, he paused beneath the spreading branches of the trees, half-closed his eyes, thought of sweet Mace, and revelled, as young men of eight-and-twenty can who love to place one object in the chiefest spot of all they see.
Here is the site of Gil Carrâs musings, for untouched Nature shows little change. Overhead there is a fabric of tenderest green leaves, laced with pearly cobweb and flashing threads of sunshine, which run in and out like sheaves of glorified asbestos, and weave the whole into a wondrous shelter beneath whose delicious dream-shadow one wanders in a haze of green. For Natureâs own colour is lavishly used to decorate this glorious amphitheatre for the first concert in spring, and there it is in every shade, from the sweet pale ash-green of the opening willow to the rich hue of the dogsâ mercury and hemlock. Green everywhere, for the delicate curtains of the trees are green, the carpet is verdant, and the banks that rise tier upon tier are of the richest velvet moss. There is no uniformity here, there are no rows of seats, but a grand confusion, upon which the eye lingers restfully and which it refuses to quit.
Lest there should be too much green, Nature has been lavish with other colours. There rise up the fascines of osiers from the lowest part of the gurgling stream, light leafy smooth stems of a golden yellow; there are the oak boles creamy and grey with wondrous lichens; grey, silvery, and golden tassels hang from sallow, alder, and willow, and the carpet is dotted with delicious patches of tint. Yonder, harmoniously blended with the green, is the purple of the wild hyacinth, amidst which, and dotting the carpet everywhere with its delicate sulphur stars, is the primrose, with the burnished bullion yellow of the celandine close by, amidst which, bending gracefully over, half modest, half vain, are the silver stars of the wood anemone, displaying their outer tints of delicate violet mauve.
Talk of violets too, there they are, not the scented sweets of earliest spring, but the larger, bluer, more plentiful Viola canina, growing in patches with the purple orchids....