SAND-DUNES 143 



together with nets and meshes deep hidden, and the 

 wind fashions a harp here, and in a minor key, sing- 

 ing softly, carries pale light over the green, and bears 

 many scents of earth out to the deep. Glimmering 

 lines of foam twinkle horizontally through the thin 

 grasses as each wave curls and breaks and spreads 

 its white ridge to right and left along the back of the 

 shallows, and, line upon line, over a huge scrip, shore- 

 wide, they write the story of the sea. There is a 

 word I seem to decipher before it vanishes ; there 

 is a sentence that I can read before it departs. The 

 sand-dunes and the waves tell each the other's story ; 

 for the countless grains that twinkle through my 

 fingers represent the activity of the sea ; while the 

 earth's flowing raiments of great waters hold hidden 

 the secret of the sand. 



Gold and grey commingled are the ancient dunes; 

 and they come back to me now as a material image 

 and picture of the gold and grey years that have 

 sped since last I saw them. Here the sun sleeps, 

 and the wind rests awhile ; and the colours blend and 

 mingle so subtly that none shall part them, none shall 

 say where brightness fades away and the shadows 

 begin. Every puff of air sends the sand-ridges dancing, 

 and scatters their little grains : they ride on air with 

 seed of thistles and grasses, rags of dry weed, or 

 fallen feather from a gull's wing ; but these dunes, 

 for all the ceaseless rearrangements of their particles, 

 continue unchanged ; even as matter is eternal, but 

 no form of it. And noting this thing, I muse 



