GOING WESTWARD 219 



ently; and past that, inevitably, is a cottage among the 

 beeches. More cottages are set in the moorland that 

 rolls to an horizon of ridgy oak away from small green 

 meadows behind the cottages. These give way to treeless 

 undulations like gigantic long barrows, coloured by sand, 

 by burnt gorse and by bracken; farther away a wooded 

 hump all dark under threatenings of storm; and farthest 

 of all, the Downs, serene and pale. The plough begins 

 to invade the forest. The undulations sink to rest in a 

 land of corn and cloud, of dark green levels, of windy 

 whitened abeles, and a shining flood gilded by a lofty 

 western sky of gold and grey. Beside the darkling waters 

 couches an old town with many windows looking under 

 thatch and tile upon grave streets, ending in a spread of 

 the river where great horses wading lift their knees high 

 as they splash under a long avenue of aspens and alarm 

 the moorhens. Beautiful looks the running river under 

 the night's hunting of the clouds and the few bright stars, 

 and beautiful again, broad blue, or streaked, or shadowy, 

 or glittering, or reed-reflecting, beside a white mill or 

 company of willows, under the breezes and pearl of 

 dawn; and I wish there were a form for saluting a new 

 country's gods and the adhuc ignota . . . flumina. 



Two roads go northward against the stream; the main 

 road straight or in long curves on one side of the river, 

 the other on the opposite bank in a string of fragments 

 zigzagging east and west and north. These fragments 

 connect houses or groups of houses with one another, and 

 it looks as if only by accident they had made the whole 

 which now connects two towns. Their chief business 

 is to serve the wheels and feet of those bound upon 

 domestic or harnlet but not urban business. Seen upon 



