The Thistledown's Not Flying

Distinctly damp here in Essex this morning but it dried out by lunchtime. I shot lots of tiny young crab spiders and plenty of other bugs. I nearly blipped a close-up of a dead shrew's beautifully bewhiskered little snout. I also liked an image of a predated pigeon's egg that had landed neatly in some photogenic moss. In the end I've gone for this morning's droplet-heavy down. The countryside was looking just like John Clare's Autumn last week.

The thistledown's flying, though the winds are all still, 
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill, 
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot; 
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot. 

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread, 
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead. 
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed, 
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed. 

Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun, 
And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run; 
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air; 
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.