July 6th

1866 - Oxfordshire

July 6. Hard thunder-showers, fine between, passing clouds. Sun coming out after one of these showers in morning hotly made ground smoke, gravel as well as lawn, some time. Lawn shews half-circle curves of the scythe in parallel ranks. Beeches seen from behind the house scatter their tops in charming tufted sheep-hooks drooping towards each other and every way. Layers or shelves of the middle cedar not level but in waved lips like silver plate. Soft vermilion leather just-budded leaves on the purple beech, and the upper sprays ruddy in the sunlight: whole effect rich, the leaves too being crisply pinched like little fingered papers....

Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets.)