Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Chapter 23 Page 1

A splendid Midsummer shone over England: skies so pure, suns so radiant as were then seen in long succession, seldom favour even singly, our wave-girt land. It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the South, like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest them on the cliffs of Albion. The hay was all got in; the fields round Thornfield were green and shorn; the roads white and baked; the trees were in their dark prime; hedge and wood, full-leaved and deeply tinted, contrasted well with the sunny hue of the cleared meadows between.

On Midsummer-eve, Ad�le, weary with gathering wild strawberries in Hay Lane half the day, had gone to bed with the sun.

I watched her drop asleep, and when I left her, I sought the garden.

It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four: —