A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



you have felt but not seen in Stamboul coming 

 through aggravating veils. The air was like chil 

 dren s kisses and as sweetly cogent as a mother s 

 prayer is to an infant that does not understand 

 one word of it. There was a tantalizing humid 

 balm in it that suggested rainbows. Some invo 

 lutions of smoke over distant fields, where the 

 brush was burning, refused to leave the earth and 

 hung in vaporous flirtation about the figurante 

 hills. A few far-off crows, low down, swam like 

 motes in our eyes, and where the western horizon 

 rounded itself in a curved sky-line against a 

 specially deep gap of distance, there was a re 

 flected light as if from a hidden sea. I felt sure 

 the waves were curling there on sandy beaches, 

 and be hanged to the geography. I said to 

 myself: 



&quot;Though inland far we be, 



Our souls have sight of that immortal sea.&quot; 



Immediately, Heine somewhere in me whis 

 pered that Wordsworth was sure to come across 

 the disk of one s mood at such times, like these 

 crows. An assertion that somebody else in me 

 who it was I do not know promptly resented, 

 because the crows do not fly high enough 



&quot; To see the children sporting on the shore 

 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.&quot; 



Charlie broke in on this reflection with his 

 usual irrelevancy. &quot; It is just like Sunday,&quot; 



260 



