Later the
violets come, and such a time as this is the perfect time to see
England: when the cuckoo is heard and he surprises his hearers; when
evenings are lengthening out and the bat is abroad again; and all the
flowers are out and all the birds sing. At such a time not only Nature
smiles but our quiet villages and grave old spires wake up from winter
in the mellow air and wear their centuries lightly. At such a time you
might come just at evening on one of those old villages in a valley
and find it in the mood to tell you the secret of the ages that it hid
and treasured there before the Normans came. Who knows? For they are
very old, very wise, very friendly; they might speak to you one warm
evening. If you went to them after great suffering they might speak to
you; after nights and nights of shelling over in France, they might
speak to you and you might hear them clearly.
It would be a long, long story that they would tell, all about the
ages; and it would vary wonderfully little, much less perhaps than we
think; and the repetitions rambling on and on in the evening, as the
old belfry spoke and the cottages gathered below it, might sound so
soothing after the boom of shells that perhaps you would nearly sleep.
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