GOING WESTWARD 217 



from brightness to gloom under windy clouds. The 

 roads are yellow, and oaks and beeches hang over them in 

 whispering companies. The wind reigns, in the high 

 magnificent onset of the clouds, in the surging trees, in 

 the wings of rooks and daws, in bowing sedges and cotton 

 grass, in quivering heather and grass, in rippling water, in 

 wildly flying linen; yet in the open there is a strange 

 silence because the roar in my ears as I walk deafens me 

 to all sound. 



White ponies graze by dark waters and stir the frag- 

 rance of the bog myrtle. The rises of the heathery moor 

 are scarred yellow where the gravel is exposed. Some- 

 times great beeches, plated with green lichen and grey, 

 wave their stiffening foliage overhead; or there is a group 

 of old hollies encircled by coeval ivy whose embraces 

 make them one, and both seem of stone. Sometimes the 

 yellow road runs green-edged among heather and gorse, 

 shadowed by pines that shake and plunge in the wind but 

 are mute. A white fungus shines damp in the purple 

 moor. There are a myriad berried hawthorns here, more 

 gorse, more heather and bracken. The tiny pools beneath 

 are blown into ripples like a swarming of bees, but the 

 infuriate streams cannot trouble the dark water and broad 

 lily leaves in their bays. Other pools again are tranquil 

 and lucid brown over submerged moss and pennywort 

 and fallen leaves, worlds to themselves with a spirit 

 indwelling in the pure element. Presently, denser trees 

 hold back the wind save in their tempestuous crests, and 

 now the road is carpeted with pine needles and nothing 

 can be seen or felt but the engulfing sound of wind and 

 rain. The pines are interrupted by tall bracken, hollies 

 and thorns, by necks of turf and isolated hawthorns 



