THE spiked carapaces of conkers lie under chestnut trees; ripening brambles are beckoning from the hedgerows. Here is Edward Thomas on the latter, though he calls them blackberries, in English fashion.

SOME DAY, I THINK, THERE WILL BE PEOPLE ENOUGH

Some day, I think, there will be people enough

In Froxfield to pick all the blackberries

Out of the hedges of Green Lane, the straight

Broad lane where now September hides herself

In bracken and blackberry, harebell and dwarf gorse.

Today, where yesterday a hundred sheep

Were nibbling, halcyon bells shake to the sway

Of waters that no vessel ever sailed. . .

It is a kind of spring: the chaffinch tries

His song. For heat it is like summer too.

This might be winter’s quiet. While the glint

Of hollies dark in the swollen hedges lasts –

One mile – and those bells ring, little I know

Or heed if time be still the same, until

The lane ends and once more all is the same.