Close to me

to the mill-pond a mile away. a blackbird was building her nest. She moved when I peeped at her, but presently returned. Her back was struck by the warm sun and was glossy in its rays. A scramble of half a mile up a rough track brought me to the common, and there, thirty miles distant, lay the chalk downs, unsubstantial, a light-blue mist.

Youth with its heat in the blood may be more capable of exultation at this season, but to the old man it brings the sounder hope and deeper joy.

ROMNEY MARSH

'Proceeding from a source of untaught things'
(Prelude xiii. 310)

HERE is Appledore; over there is Romney Marsh. The sky has partly cleared after heavy, south-westerly rain. On the horizon where the sea lies the clouds are in a line, and the air is so clear that their edges are sharp against the blue. Nearer to me they are slowly dissolving, re-forming, and moving eastwards, and their shadows are crossing the wide grassy plain on which in the distance Lydd Church is just discernible. I can report something of those greys and that azure, but the best part of what is before me will not outline itself to me. Still less can I shape it in speech. Necessity, majestic inevitable movement, the folly of heat and hurry, all this emerges and again is blended in the simple unity of transcendent loveliness. But beyond there is something so close, so

precious! and yet elusive of every effort to grasp it.

She came to meet me from the line
Where lies the ocean miles away;
And now she's close; she must be mine:
I wait the word that she must say.

The magic word is not for me:

The vision fades, and far and near
The west wind stirs the grassy sea
In whispers to the watching ear.

AXMOUTH

A TRUE Devonshire village, sloping upwards from the Axe. The cottages are thatched, and the walls are of cobbles, plastered. A little gurgling stream runs down the village street, and over the stream each cottage on its bank has a little bridge. The poor brook is much troubled, unhappily, by cabbage leaves and the like defilement, and does its best to oversweep them and carry them away, but does not quite succeed. In a few minutes, however, it will be in the Axe, and in half an hour it will be in the pure sea. A farmhouse stands at the end of the village with a farmyard of deep manure and black puddles coming up to the sidedoor. The church, once interesting, has been restored with more than usual barbarity, blue slates, villa ridge-tiles, the vulgarest cheap pavement, tawdry decorations and furniture, such as are supplied to churchwardens by ecclesiastical tradesBut the tower is still grey, and has

men.

looked unchanged over the the Axe estuary for hundreds of years. Turning up from the main street is a Devonshire lane eight feet wide or thereabouts. It ascends to a farm on the hillside, and its steep high banks are covered with ferns and primroses. A tiny brooklet twitters down by its side. At the top of the down is a line of old hawthorns blown slantingly by south-west storms into a close, solid mass of shoots and prickles. They are dwarfed in their struggle, but have thick trunks, many of them covered with brilliant yellow lichen.

For miles and miles before it comes to Axmouth, and above Axminster, the Axe flows in singular loops, often returning almost upon itself, reluctant to quit the lovely land of its birth, youth, and maturity; but now it is straighter, for it is in the lowlands and feels the tide. Flocks of

seagulls wade or float in it. It passes quietly under its last bridge, but beyond it is confronted by a huge shingle barrier. Sweeping alongside it, it suddenly turns at right angles, cuts its way through with an exulting rush, holds back for a few yards. the sea waves that ripple against it, and is then lost.