It is the nature of the oak to be still, it is the nature of the hawk to
roam with the wind. The Anglo-Saxon labourer remains in his cottage
generation after generation, ploughing the same fields; the express train
may rush by, but he feels no wish to rush with it; he scarcely turns to
look at it; all the note he takes is that it marks the time to 'knock
off' and ride the horses home. And if hard want at last forces him away,
and he emigrates, he would as soon jog to the port in a waggon, a week on
the road, as go by steam; as soon voyage in a sailing ship as by the
swift Cunarder. The swart gipsy, like the hawk, for ever travels on, but,
like the hawk, that seems to have no road, and yet returns to the same
trees, so he, winding in circles of which we civilised people do not
understand the map, comes, in his own times and seasons, home to the same
waste spot, and cooks his savoury _bouillon_ by the same beech. They have
camped here for so many years that it is impossible to trace when they
did not; it is wild still, like themselves. Nor has their nature changed
any more than the nature of the trees.
The gipsy loves the crescent moon, the evening star, the clatter of the
fern-owl, the beetle's hum. He was born on the earth in the tent, and he
has lived like a species of human wild animal ever since. Of his own free
will he will have nothing to do with rites or litanies: he may perhaps be
married in a place of worship--to make it legal, that is all.
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