WINTER SKIES 



rose stupendous II Capitans of agate and brass. 

 But something whispered that over those cliffs had 

 gone all the sandalled hopes and blithe promises 

 into shoreless vacancy. A phantasmic sub-light 

 gave it all a tone of irony that was like a faint 

 chill, and taunted me with lost laughter and music 

 frozen in mystery and silence. 



It requires considerable courage to confront the 

 ominous banners that we ourselves fling into the 

 winter sunset. Men and women who never look 

 into themselves without being frightened, run from 

 the country when December sets her reminders in 

 the air. We call it the social season, because we 

 come closer together, and look into each other s 

 faces, and try to forget. 



Had I been alone when these thoughts were 

 stirred in me, they must have taken on a momen 

 tary desolation ; that kind of melancholy which 

 has sobs in it, involuntary and unexpressed ; we 

 listen to them as we do in dreams, and they seem, 

 as De Quincey puts it, to have swept the fields of 

 mortality for a thousand years. 



But I was not alone. Griselle and I were 

 straying aimlessly among the trees, and my mood 

 wore her as a kind of armour. We came suddenly 

 upon a bright spot, no bigger than the floor of 

 my cabin. It was vividly green, with a defiant 

 moss that spread around in little hummocks, and 

 was fringed by hardy ferns, and picked out here 

 and there with the red berries of the partridge- 

 vine that looked like drops of blood against the 

 bronze leaves. Over it all poured the almost level 



285 



