In autumn the leaves
fell from the hazel wands and the ashpoles, from the elderberries
and the oaks, exposing against a drab sky the squirrel dreys and
the birds' nests–deserted tokens of hope. Deprived of leafy
protection, the forms of the year's failures were shown, hanging
starkly and in silence. The flies that had buzzed about the wasted
corpses were dead, and only moisture dripped upon them from the
bare branches above. Some were green and mouldy, others were
hairless and mummified. In places only a whiskered
skull–grotesque caricature of life with its empty eye-
sockets–hung grinning on a rotting string. Dishevelled crows
dangled from other tiers, with sparrow-hawks and kestrels,
hedgehogs, rats and poaching cats. This was the gallows-tree of the
failures, of the wood rogues, of the beasts and birds unrepentant
in life and in death.
Henry Williamson
