IN A GREEN COUNTRY 151 



There was no such bar in my case; being one we 

 could not asunder dwell. For my mistress is more to 

 me than any Cynthia to any poet; she is immortal 

 and has green hair and green eyes, and her body and 

 soul are green, and to those who live with and love 

 her she gives a green soul as a special favour. 



With this feeling impelling me I quitted the train 

 and took to the wheel, which runs without a sound, 

 as a serpent glides or a swallow skims, and brings you 

 down to a closer intimacy with the earth. 



How unspeakably grateful we should be for this 

 gift — we lovers of the road and of nature's quietude 

 who have a meek and quiet spirit — to go on our way 

 like the owl by night on its downy silent wings! So 

 quiet is the wheel that on two separate occasions I 

 have passed a blind man on a quiet country road, so 

 closely as almost to touch him, without his knowing 

 it until I spoke. This seemed marvellous to me 

 when I considered the almost preternatural keenness 

 of the hearing sense in the blind, especially in blind 

 men who are accustomed to go freely about in country 

 places. In both instances the man, when spoken to, 

 started and wheeling partly round delivered his reply 

 in the direction from which the voice had come, 

 though the speaker was no longer there, having gone 

 twenty or thirty yards past the point. 



My second encounter with a blind man was during 

 the ramble in a green country. I alighted, and 

 watched him go on feeling his way along the edge 

 of the road with his stick. He was a mile or more 

 from the village at a spot where the road went by 



