Also Sir Tristram spent a great deal of time at chase with hawk and hound;
for he hoped by means also of such sports to drive away, in some measure,
his grief for the loss of Belle Isoult.
Now the season whereof this chapter speaketh was in the autumn of the year,
what time all the earth is glorious with the brown and gold of the
woodlands. For anon, when the wind would blow, then the leaves would fall
down from the trees like showers of gold so that everywhere they lay heaped
like flakes of gold upon the russet sward, rustling dry and warm beneath
the feet, and carpeting all the world with splendor. And the deep blue sky
overhead was heaped full of white, slow-moving clouds, and everywhere the
warm air was fragrant with the perfume of the forest, and at every strong
breeze the nuts would fall pattering down upon the ground like hailstones.
[Sidenote: Sir Tristram rides ahunting] And because the world was so
beautiful and so lusty, Sir Tristram took great pleasure in life in spite
of that trouble that lay upon him. So he and his court rode very joyfully
amid the trees and thickets, making the woodlands merry with the music of
winding horns and loud-calling voices and with the baying of hounds
sounding like sweet tolling bells in the remoter aisles of the forest
spaces.
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