Hops in — Kent In the Kentish hop-gardens, however, the burning of
the vine-sterns is a legitimate procedure, for it is done on such a scale that considerable amounts of potash are left, to scatter round the " hills," as the root- mound of the hops is called. The scene is almost a sacred one. The landscape, set with a vertical notation of bare poles in the gardens, and denuded trunks in the copses and fruit orchards, becomes woven with a music-score of pearl-grey smoke, that winds a fugal counterpoint at the direction of the November airs. If the mornings be frost-bound, the smoke will stand still, frozen into stone, until the sun warms it and draws it into reluctant' motion again. The Movement, burdened with time and recollection older than individual Ilk' is'almost unendurable to the mortal onlooker. It is like history embodied, or hale embodied. Every year it takes me by the heart, as it took Laurence Binyon, who wrote one of his best poems on this theme, to remind himself that in spite of the sadness of these vegetable obsequies:
"They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour, And magical scents to a wondering memory bring ; The same glory, to shine upon different eyes. . Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours. Nothing is certain, only the certain spring."
Shakespeare's "ruined choirs," however, are already tuning up, for the song of the thrush, that most youthful agd encouraging sound in all nature, is already abroad, especially after daybreak as an accompani- ment to the morning cup of tea` on' the terrace, with which I begin my country day. I'd like to'-quote -something in -verse about that, too ; but I must not make my oolutrin!intd'an-anthology.
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