England, My England D. H. Lawrence Author

There was a sound of children's voices calling and talking: high, childish, girlish voices,slightly didactic and tinged with domineering: If you don't come quick, nurse, I shall runout there to where there are snakes. And nobody had the sang-... Read more

There was a sound of children's voices calling and talking: high, childish, girlish voices,slightly didactic and tinged with domineering: If you don't come quick, nurse, I shall runout there to where there are snakes. And nobody had the sang-froid to reply: Run then,little fool. It was always, No, darling. Very well, darling. In a moment, darling. Darling, youmust be patient.His heart was hard with disillusion: a continual gnawing and resistance. But he workedon. What was there to do but submit!The sunlight blazed down upon the earth, there was a vividness of flamy vegetation, offierce seclusion amid the savage peace of the commons. Strange how the savage Englandlingers in patches: as here, amid these shaggy gorse commons, and marshy, snake infestedplaces near the foot of the south downs. The spirit of place lingering on primeval, as whenthe Saxons came, so long ago.Ah, how he had loved it! The green garden path, the tufts of flowers, purple and whitecolumbines, and great oriental red poppies with their black chaps and mulleins tall andyellow, this flamy garden which had been a garden for a thousand years, scooped out in thelittle hollow among the snake-infested commons. He had made it flame with flowers, in asun cup under its hedges and trees. So old, so old a place! And yet he had re-created it.The timbered cottage with its sloping, cloak-like roof was old and forgotten. It belongedto the old England of hamlets and yeomen. Lost all alone on the edge of the common, at theend of a wide, grassy, briar-entangled lane shaded with oak, it had never known the worldof today. Not till Egbert came with his bride. And he had come to fill it with flowers.The house was ancient and very uncomfortable. But he did not want to alter it. Ah,marvellous to sit there in the wide, black, time-old chimney, at night when the wind roaredoverhead, and the wood which he had chopped himself sputtered on the hearth! Himself onone side the angle, and Winifred on the other. Less