CHAPTER IX 



IN DUTCH WATER MEADOWS 



' Where the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile, 

 Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile. 

 The slow canal, the yellow blossomed vale, 

 The willow tufted bank, the gliding sail.' GOLDSMITH. 



IN these materialistic days it is at the bidding of the 

 poet only that the shadow of the sundial moves back- 

 Avards. If the more glaring the improbabilities in the 

 face of which the miracle is performed, the greater the 

 genius of the worker, among the greatest of the poets 

 and poems of recent days must be Goldsmith and his 

 Deserted Village, Sweet Auburn, with its garden- 

 flowers growing wild, and Bitterns returning to nest 

 in spots where once villagers had danced and talked 

 local politics, is as real to most of us as Charing Cross, 

 though we know well enough that as ' wealth accumu- 

 lates,' trim gardens, instead of running to waste, push 

 out in every direction. It is the Bittern which is 

 giving place to man, and not man to the Bittern ; and 

 if we want to see anything of these and other Waders 

 which only a generation ago were common in England, 

 we must turn our backs on home, and look to countries 



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