The Sun. SATURDAY, JULY 21, 1925. SUMMER AT HOME

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 412, 21 July 1928, Page 8

The Sun. SATURDAY, JULY 21, 1925. SUMMER AT HOME

IN a light lyric to any exiled Scot a nimble versifier in the London “Spectator” advises one to take the map of Scotland, brindled with jade, and mark the place where you would bide. It is a pleasant fancy that need not be confined in exercise to the cartography of the land of mountain mist, dappled weather, dry or dripping heather, and those lovely haunts where “yours will be the calling hills, and every little pool that spills from opal into amber.” Let everyone hie to the map of his own country and, with the eag'er point of a stubby pencil, mark the place that is first in his innermost heart and perfect dreams. And there shall be complete content though it may be only in the rosy vision of the mind, the elusive, ever-beckoning “Some-where-else of the Imagination.” Where would you bide? It is a teasing question, not to be answered easily, perhaps best not answered at all. But if compulsion rather than chance (which so often takes one where one has no desire to be) should limit the direction of response to the British Isles, it is easy to understand how diversified the answers would be, how delightful to each individual the choice of that one place above all others. From Land’s End to John o’ Groats, from the Humber to the Hebrides, from the Isle of Man to the big toe of Ireland, tlie range gives scope of selection among a thousand places of delight. The fancy of the poet is all the more alluring at the moment because in the Homeland now it is the high noon of summer and the time of the long, lingering twilight. Out of the welter of news from London this week there emerged one item that must have quickened memories among the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who roamed the isles of their fathers a decade or so ago, and must have given to as many folks from county and shire, from croft and clachan a nostalgic yearning for home. With a fine modesty it told something of the glory of perfect summer weather in the United Kingdom. There was some restraint in the telling because of the associative reference to death from a heat wave—a sad effect, beyond doubt, but not too poignant a tragedy. In the British Isles there are far worse causes of death than the heat of the sun. The toll of wayfarers in the hard winter, for example, is a normal event not worth broadcasting all over the world. And what does it mean for the British, nation to have a genial summer? It means a great deal more than laverocks and nightingales singing, cuckoos calling, and the whispering of beech leaves and pine. That is the poetical gain which may not be treated lightly, for it has a great influence on national life. But there is a practical benefit. A glorious summer means health and wealth for an old nation. It means a better helping of cream and. cheese and inimitable cider; also a fine harvest of hops and barley, those basic riches which maintain the nobles in luxury, sustain the British workman in optimism and moisten the statutory dryness of the Americans. It also means the prospect of some prosperity (a rare gift) for the sturdy British farmer who has had many lean years and. not much political coddling. Incidentally, it may be noted that, in this favoured, but ungrateful country, there is frequently a bucolic whimpering about adversity. It is a thin complaint. Nature lends generously in New Zealand and rarely demands a usurer’s interest. If it were as exacting as the moneylenders, not even a farmers’ Government could lift our yoemen out of their slough of grievances.

When Nature is kind to British farmers, it is then that all is well with the kingdom. The countryside laughs at pessimism. The song of the peasant and the poet smothers the droning of the politician. And most of the people then know without overworking their imagination where they may find the best place to bide. With pleasure and quiet pride they view “the ground’s most gentle dimplement (as if God’s finger touched but did not press down in making England), such an up and down of verdure—nothing too much up or down, a ripple of land,” and are content to dwell there, rooted in enduring love of a beautiful land.

_ The map (it may be noticed) has not yet been marked in choice of the best place. Nor will it be marked here. Each one must make his own mark, for no individual can determine the reason for another’s preference. It may be nothing more than a thatched cottage on a wine-red moor, or a lane between tilth and pasture; or the quiet of a little town still untouched by the fury of modern life. It may be just the memory of a nook in oldest England with the sun westering behind the flying towers of an ancient cathedral. Who can tell except the marker? Meanwhile, we may all rejoice that Great Britain' is the sunlit centre of the Empire, the source of its inspiration, and the guide of its progress and greater destiny. After all, is there anything more beautiful than sunshine upon an English meadow? “Yes,” thrice repeated, cry the Scot, the Irishman, the man of Wales, and the New Zealander. It is quite all right. That is the spirit which keeps nations alive and alert.