And It Was
Only By The Sea That Any Such Sheltered Places Were To Be Found.
Between The Black Worm-
Eaten head-lands there are little bights and
havens, well screened from the wind and the commotion of the
external
Sea, where the sand and weeds look up into the gazer's
face from a depth of tranquil water, and the sea-birds, screaming
and flickering from the ruined crags, alone disturb the silence and
the sunshine. One such place has impressed itself on my memory
beyond all others. On a rock by the water's edge, old fighting men
of the Norse breed had planted a double castle; the two stood wall
to wall like semi-detached villas; and yet feud had run so high
between their owners, that one, from out of a window, shot the
other as he stood in his own doorway. There is something in the
juxtaposition of these two enemies full of tragic irony. It is
grim to think of bearded men and bitter women taking hateful
counsel together about the two hall-fires at night, when the sea
boomed against the foundations and the wild winter wind was loose
over the battlements. And in the study we may reconstruct for
ourselves some pale figure of what life then was. Not so when we
are there; when we are there such thoughts come to us only to
intensify a contrary impression, and association is turned against
itself. I remember walking thither three afternoons in succession,
my eyes weary with being set against the wind, and how, dropping
suddenly over the edge of the down, I found myself in a new world
of warmth and shelter. The wind, from which I had escaped, 'as
from an enemy,' was seemingly quite local. It carried no clouds
with it, and came from such a quarter that it did not trouble the
sea within view. The two castles, black and ruinous as the rocks
about them, were still distinguishable from these by something more
insecure and fantastic in the outline, something that the last
storm had left imminent and the next would demolish entirely. It
would be difficult to render in words the sense of peace that took
possession of me on these three afternoons. It was helped out, as
I have said, by the contrast. The shore was battered and bemauled
by previous tempests; I had the memory at heart of the insane
strife of the pigmies who had erected these two castles and lived
in them in mutual distrust and enmity, and knew I had only to put
my head out of this little cup of shelter to find the hard wind
blowing in my eyes; and yet there were the two great tracts of
motionless blue air and peaceful sea looking on, unconcerned and
apart, at the turmoil of the present moment and the memorials of
the precarious past. There is ever something transitory and
fretful in the impression of a high wind under a cloudless sky; it
seems to have no root in the constitution of things; it must
speedily begin to faint and wither away like a cut flower. And on
those days the thought of the wind and the thought of human life
came very near together in my mind. Our noisy years did indeed
seem moments in the being of the eternal silence; and the wind, in
the face of that great field of stationary blue, was as the wind of
a butterfly's wing. The placidity of the sea was a thing likewise
to be remembered. Shelley speaks of the sea as 'hungering for
calm,' and in this place one learned to understand the phrase.
Looking down into these green waters from the broken edge of the
rock, or swimming leisurely in the sunshine, it seemed to me that
they were enjoying their own tranquillity; and when now and again
it was disturbed by a wind ripple on the surface, or the quick
black passage of a fish far below, they settled back again (one
could fancy) with relief.
On shore too, in the little nook of shelter, everything was so
subdued and still that the least particular struck in me a
pleasurable surprise. The desultory crackling of the whin-pods in
the afternoon sun usurped the ear. The hot, sweet breath of the
bank, that had been saturated all day long with sunshine, and now
exhaled it into my face, was like the breath of a fellow-creature.
I remember that I was haunted by two lines of French verse; in some
dumb way they seemed to fit my surroundings and give expression to
the contentment that was in me, and I kept repeating to myself -
'Mon coeur est un luth suspendu,
Sitot qu'on le touche, il resonne.'
I can give no reason why these lines came to me at this time; and
for that very cause I repeat them here. For all I know, they may
serve to complete the impression in the mind of the reader, as they
were certainly a part of it for me.
And this happened to me in the place of all others where I liked
least to stay. When I think of it I grow ashamed of my own
ingratitude. 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness.' There, in
the bleak and gusty North, I received, perhaps, my strongest
impression of peace. I saw the sea to be great and calm; and the
earth, in that little corner, was all alive and friendly to me.
So, wherever a man is, he will find something to please and pacify
him: in the town he will meet pleasant faces of men and women, and
see beautiful flowers at a window, or hear a cage-bird singing at
the corner of the gloomiest street; and for the country, there is
no country without some amenity - let him only look for it in the
right spirit, and he will surely find.
Footnotes:
{1} The Second Part here referred to is entitled 'ACROSS THE
PLAINS,' and is printed in the volume so entitled, together with
other Memories and Essays.
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