Altogether She Was Like
A Being Compounded As To Her Grosser Part Of Foam And Mist And
Gossamer And Thistledown,
And was swayed by every breath of
air, and who, should she venture abroad in rough weather,
would be lifted
And blown away by the gale and scattered like
mist over the earth. Yet she, so frail, so timid, was the one
member of the community who had set herself to do the work of
a giant - that of championing all ill-used and suffering
creatures, wild or tame, holding a protecting shield over them
against the innate brutality of the people. She had been
abused and mocked and jeered at by many, while others had
regarded her action with an amused smile or else with a cold
indifference. But eventually some, for very shame, had been
drawn to her side, and a change in the feeling of the people
had resulted; domestic animals were treated better, and it was
no longer universally believed that all wild animals,
especially those with wings, existed only that men might amuse
themselves by killing and wounding and trapping and caging and
persecuting them in various other ways.
The sight of that burning and shining spirit in its frail
tenement - for did I not actually see her spirit and the very
soul of her in those eyes? - was the last of the unforgotten
experiences I had at that place which had startled and
repelled me with its ugliness.
But, no, there was one more, marvellous as any - the experience
of a day of days, one of those rare days when nature appears
to us spiritualized and is no longer nature, when that which
had transfigured this visible world is in us too, and it
becomes possible to believe - it is almost a conviction - that
the burning and shining spirit seen and recognized in one
among a thousand we have known is in all of us and in all
things. In such moments it is possible to go beyond even the
most advanced of the modern physicists who hold that force
alone exists, that matter is but a disguise, a shadow and
delusion; for we may add that force itself - that which we call
force or energy - is but a semblance and shadow of the
universal soul.
The change in the weather was not sudden; the furious winds
dropped gradually; the clouds floated higher in the heavens,
and were of a lighter grey; there were wider breaks in them,
showing the lucid blue beyond; and the sea grew quieter. It
had raved and roared too long, beating against the iron walls
that held it back, and was now spent and fallen into an uneasy
sleep, but still moved uneasily and moaned a little. Then all
at once summer returned, coming like a thief in the night, for
when it was morning the sun rose in splendour and power in a
sky without a cloud on its vast azure expanse, on a calm sea
with no motion but that scarcely perceptible rise and fall as
of one that sleeps. As the sun rose higher the air grew
warmer until it was full summer heat, but although a "visible
heat," it was never oppressive; for all that day we were
abroad, and as the tide ebbed a new country that was neither
earth nor sea was disclosed, an infinite expanse of pale
yellow sand stretching away on either side, and further and
further out until it mingled and melted into the sparkling
water and faintly seen line of foam on the horizon. And over
all - the distant sea, the ridge of low dunes marking where the
earth ended and the flat, yellow expanse between - there
brooded a soft bluish silvery haze. A haze that blotted
nothing out, but blended and interfused them all until earth
and air and sea and sands were scarcely distinguishable. The
effect, delicate, mysterious, unearthly, cannot be described.
Ethereal gauze . . .
Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea,
Last conquest of the eye . . .
Sun dust,
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth,
Ethereal estuary, frith of light. . . .
Bird of the sun, transparent winged.
Do we not see that words fail as pigments do - that the effect
is too coarse, since in describing it we put it before the
mental eye as something distinctly visible, a thing of itself
and separate. But it is not so in nature; the effect is of
something almost invisible and is yet a part of all and makes
all things - sky and sea and land - as unsubstantial as itself.
Even living, moving things had that aspect. Far out on the
lowest further strip of sand, which appeared to be on a level
with the sea, gulls were seen standing in twos and threes and
small groups and in rows; but they did not look like gulls
- familiar birds, gull-shaped with grey and white plumage.
They appeared twice as big as gulls, and were of a dazzling
whiteness and of no definite shape: though standing still they
had motion, an effect of the quivering dancing air, the
"visible heat"; at rest, they were seen now as separate
objects; then as one with the silver sparkle on the
sea; and when they rose and floated away they were no longer
shining and white, but like pale shadows of winged forms
faintly visible in the haze.
They were not birds but spirits - beings that lived in or were
passing through the world and now, like the heat, made
visible; and I, standing far out on the sparkling sands, with
the sparkling sea on one side and the line of dunes,
indistinctly seen as land, on the other, was one of them; and
if any person had looked at me from a distance he would have
seen me as a formless shining white being standing by the sea,
and then perhaps as a winged shadow floating in the haze. It
was only necessary to put out one's arms to float. That was
the effect on my mind:
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