TO BRIGHTON 191 



Down in the hollow the breeze does not come, and 

 the bennets do not whistle, yet gazing upwards at the 

 vapour in the sky I fancy I can hear the mass, as it 

 were, of the wind going over. Standing presently at the 

 edge of the steep descent looking into the Weald, it 

 seems as if the mighty blast rising from that vast plain 

 and glancing up the slope like an arrow from a tree 

 could lift me up and bear me as it bears a hawk with 

 outspread wings. 



A mist which does not roll along or move is drawn 

 across the immense stage below like a curtain. There 

 is, indeed, a brown wood beneath ; but nothing more 

 is visible. The plain is the vaster for its vague un- 

 certainty. From the north comes down the wind, out 

 of the brown autumn light, from the woods below and 

 twenty miles of stubble. Its stratum and current is 

 eight hundred feet deep. 



Against my chest, coming up from the plough down 

 there (the old plough, with the shaft moving on a frame- 

 work with wheels), it hurls itself against the green ram- 

 parts, and bounds up savagely at delay. The ears are 

 filled with a continuous sense of something rushing past 

 the shoulders go back square ; an iron-like feeling enters 

 into the sinews. The air goes through my coat as if it 

 were gauze, and strokes the skin like a brush. 



The tide of the wind, like the tide of the sea, swirls 

 about, and its cold push at the first causes a lifting feel- 

 ing in the chest a gulp and pant as if it were too 

 keen and strong to be borne. Then the blood meets it, 

 and every fibre and nerve is filled with new vigour. I 

 cannot drink enough of it. This is the north wind. 



High as is the hill, there are larks yonder singing 

 higher still, suspended in the brown light. Turning 

 away at last and tracing the fosse, there is at the point 



