Greene Ferne Farm by Richard Jefferies

Once more Andrew Fisher, aged ninety years, sat in his beehive chair facing the western window in Warren House. The sun was sinking, and seemed to hang over the distant vale, towards which the old man's countenance was turned. Once more the sickle had done its work, and the golden grain was garnered. For the shadow of the days had gone forward upon the dial, whose ancient graven circles, dimmed with green rust, timed the equinox and the march of the firmament. The merry barley was laid low; and the acorns -- first green, then faintly yellow -- were ripening brown in their cups upon the oaks.

On the ledge of the chimney, where the level rays came warmest, and stone and tile radiated heat, the last lingering swallows twittered a long farewell. For the oxen had already felt the drag of the heavy plough. The ivy flowered on the wall, blossoming for winter, and there was a buzz of flies gathering on the pane towards the sun. As a ripe pear that waited but the rude shock of the wind, the full year was bending to its fall. Overhead the rooks were floating idly home down towards Thorpe Wood. The long files of the black army streaked the sky with streaming thousands far as the eye could see, and filled the air with the strange rush and creaking of their wings and the goblin chuckle of the noisy jackdaws. The feathery heads of the reeds by the mill-pool bowed mournfully; and in the hush of the dying day came the monotonous chaunt of the mill-wheel, ever round and round, without haste and without rest; and with it mingled the sounding rush of the race, of its foam and bubble and spray as of human life.