THE BREEZE ON BEACHY HEAD 205 



The little rules and little experiences, all the petty 

 ways of narrow life, are shut off behind by the ponderous 

 and impassable cliff; as if we had dwelt in the dim light of 

 a cave, but coming out at last to look at the sun, a great 

 stone had fallen and closed the entrance, so that there 

 was no return to the shadow. The impassable precipice 

 shuts off our former selves of yesterday, forcing us to 

 look out over the sea only, or up to the deeper heaven. 



These breadths draw out the soul ; we feel that we 

 have wider thoughts than we knew ; the soul has been 

 living, as it were, in a nutshell, all unaware of its own 

 power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun and 

 the sky. Straight, as if sawn down from turf to beach, 

 the cliff shuts off the human world, for the sea knows 

 no time and no era ; you cannot tell what century it is 

 from the face of the sea. A Roman trireme suddenly 

 rounding the white edge-line of chalk, borne on wind 

 and oar from the Isle of Wight towards the gray castle 

 at Pevensey (already old in olden days), would not 

 seem strange. What wonder could surprise us coming 

 from the wonderful sea? 



The little rills winding through the sand have made 

 an islet of a detached rock by the beach ; limpets cover 

 it, adhering like rivet-heads. In the stillness here, under 

 the roof of the wind so high above, the sound of the 

 sand draining itself is audible. From the cliff blocks of 

 chalk have fallen, leaving hollows as when a knot drops 

 from a beam. They lie crushed together at the base, and 

 on the point of this jagged ridge a wheatear perches. 



There are ledges three hundred feet above, and from 

 these now and then a jackdaw glides out and returns 

 again to his place, where, when still and with folded 

 wings, he is but a speck of black. A spire of chalk still 

 higher stands out from the wall, but the rains have got 

 behind it and will cut the crevice deeper and deeper 



