I wonder to myself how they can all get on without me--how they manage,
bird and flower, without me to keep the calendar for them. For I noted it
so carefully and lovingly, day by day, the seed-leaves on the mounds in
the sheltered places that come so early, the pushing up of the young
grass, the succulent dandelion, the coltsfoot on the heavy, thick clods,
the trodden chickweed despised at the foot of the gate-post, so common
and small, and yet so dear to me. Every blade of grass was mine, as
though I had planted it separately. They were all my pets, as the roses
the lover of his garden tends so faithfully. All the grasses of the
meadow were my pets, I loved them all; and perhaps that was why I never
had a 'pet,' never cultivated a flower, never kept a caged bird, or any
creature. Why keep pets when every wild free hawk that passed overhead in
the air was mine? I joyed in his swift, careless flight, in the throw of
his pinions, in his rush over the elms and miles of woodland; it was
happiness to see his unchecked life. What more beautiful than the sweep
and curve of his going through the azure sky? These were my pets, and all
the grass. Under the wind it seemed to dry and become grey, and the
starlings running to and fro on the surface that did not sink now stood
high above it and were larger. The dust that drifted along blessed it and
it grew. Day by day a change; always a note to make. The moss drying on
the tree trunks, dog's-mercury stirring under the ash-poles, bird's-claw
buds of beech lengthening; books upon books to be filled with these
things.
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