8 MY DEVON YEAR 



that they have retreated into arcana of Nature and 

 seem to brood in a sort of solemn arboreal excitation, 

 each leaf partaking, each twig and bough sharing, in 

 the trance of the mother tree. 



But these moments and the hushed climaxes ol 

 them are incommunicable. The very thoughts bred 

 when we stand at invisible barriers and see the 

 Mother in some moment of her unknown ritual may 

 not be set down. For one cannot create new words ; 

 one is mute before the shrine of such solemnities. 

 They come and go, quicker than rainbow colours ; 

 for a moment we see, for a fraction of time we under- 

 stand ; then all changes, and the familiar objects 

 emerge from their transfiguration, and we know them 

 again as they seem to return out of their vigils. 



And these holy days that deny their secret are not 

 fabulous : they are veritable intervals of time, shone 

 upon, blown upon, rained upon, revealed by morning 

 and shadowed by night. They come when least we 

 think to meet them ; they suddenly puzzle the wan- 

 derer it may be in the noontide hour of his clearest 

 seeing. They are agents of mystery ; they, too, belong 

 to Truth ; and their very reservations stir the under 

 deeps of human imagination with reverence. 



But this also I say : that I press not to Nature in 

 hope to find anything beyond it ; because for me the 

 secret of the day and the magic of the night alike 

 hold no revelations and no truths that lie outside the 

 confines of the natural order. 



One may recognise and deplore the limitation of 



