--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Jones, Florence L. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 16 number: 3 published: 1913-01 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Jones, Florence L., \"Milton's Country and Gray's,\" *Improvement Era* 16, no. 3 (January 1913): 224–226." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1603unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1603unse start_page: 224 end_page: 226 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1913-01) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1603unse publication_year: 1913 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1913, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Milton's Country and Gray's Milton's Country— and Gray's An Autumn Reverie BY FLORENCE L. JONES — Far from the madding crowd just out of London, the - valley town lies like a nest amidst sweeping uplands. In the peaceful haze an hour before twilight, the view is one of the most picturesque throughout agricultural England. The harvested oats and barley, bound in sheaves. The fields of still standing wheat, a-ripple like a saffron lake when a zephyr passes over them. The sloping pasture lands, wherein are ruddy patches contributed by quietly grazing cattle. The thick belt of trees beyond. Over it all the slowly-fading pageant of the sunset. In the purpureal light that succeeds, while the evening star brightens, the amber strands of glowing sky, the verdant pasture lands, the number of MILTON S COTTAGE, CIIALFONT, ST. GILES MILTON'S COUNTRY— AND GRAY'S 225 lately harrowed acres, the gold of harvest fields, sentineled by shadowy trees, fade into the blue-grey distance, at one with the horizon. In these contrasting slopes, decked at man's wish and Nature's will, boundless to the eye, is an impression of abiding peace and freedom. The tranquil picturesqueness of the scene is enhanced to the inner sense by association with the near vicinity of two great English poets. Involuntarily, too, there arises in that background the haunting lilt of a later singer. Walking through the long, sloping barley fields, "that clothe the world and meet the sky," one feels that they must lead soon to towered Camelot. And hark! Is that a hymn chanted by devout harvesters? Is it the caroling of the lone Lady of Shalott heard from afar? But it is Milton's Country, and it is Gray's. And looking on these sloping fields, these magnificent trees whose boughs have grown green and become bare in summer's alternation with winter through centuries, one feels that "L'Allegro" or the immortal Elegy might have been perpetuated with inspired quill out of such environment only yesterday. But where are the deep-eaved cottages, the ruddy farm-steads, with quaint weather-cock and gable? Gone with the graceful sweep of the scythe, the merry Maypole, and the boisterous harvest supper. Gone with their raftered chimneys and flaming hearths, and the yokel's belief in gargoylefeatured goblin and cricket-voiced sprite. In their places are the gaunt chimneys of leather-factories and saw-mills. The valley- red-brick dwellings, elbowed by little nest is crowded with rows of assertive facade villas with exotic names, upon which stares the of a board school. All the dwellings in the valley now are illum- ined with electric light. spire beckons the eye to where grey head-stones lean awry A beneath the sombre shade of evergreens. These fields, these hale world of Lon- and venerable trees, from whence the kaleidoscopic almost the same as when don lies but a score of miles away, are such in his mind's Gray meditated amongst them as when, with ; reveries. But amidst the wood eye Milton composed his lyrical that appears to remain and pasture of these peaceful uplands, all are grey head-stones crumbling of things human of the olden time in capital, in the church-yard. In breeze-swept rural district as 226 IMPROVEMENT ERA nowadays, one is impelled to ponder how "the old order changeth, yielding place to new." The electric light in the valley from a — hundred points signals the march of modernity the inward unrest, the outward uniformity implied in the word — upon these STOKE POGIS CHURCH fields, over which now hangs the half-shield of the waxing harvest-moon. A sinuous trail of steam and smoke fades in the air like a dream, as a puffing train curves and lurches on its way to London. LONDON, ENGLAND