Hop - Pickers
But since the relaxing of the black-out regulations there have been other illuminations in our countryside. The hop-pickers (who are now packing up and departing), have dared to lease their cooking-fires glowing after dark. And from a farmhouse or cottage here and there along the opposite ridge across the valley, a window has gleamed at night. It has had the same effect upon me as had the first pealing of the church bells after so long a silence. The human family seemed to compose itself again, wrapping its centuries of cosiness and privacy around it like a shawl. I recalled to myself some lines written nearly forty years ago by an Excise officer who showed them to me in that gloomy old Custom House, now a ruin, in Billingsgate.
"The little lamps that mark the homes of men, Shining like yellow beacons through the bars, Hold more of love than ever poet's pen Traced in the silver radiance of the stars."
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