For most of us, for those of us who do not The 

 dwell by lonely shores and seldom behold the Sea-Spell, 

 sea but in the quiet seasons, it is either a 

 delight or an oppression. Some can no more 

 love it, or can have any well-being or com- 

 posure near it, than others can be well or 

 content where vast moors reach from skyline 

 to skyline, or amid the green solemnities of 

 forests, or where stillness inhabits the hollows 

 of hills. But for those who do love it, what 

 a joy it is ! The Sea . . . the very words 

 have magic. It is like the sound of a horn 

 in woods, like the sound of a bugle in the 

 dusk, like the cry of wind leaping the long 

 bastions of silence. To many of us there 

 is no call like it, no other such clarion of 

 gladness. 



But when one speaks of the sea it is as 

 though one should speak of summer or winter, 

 of spring or autumn. It has many aspects : it 

 is not here what it is yonder, yonder it is not 

 what it is afar off: here, even, it is not in 

 August what it is when the March winds, 

 those steel-blue coursers, are unleashed ; the 

 grey-green calms of January differ from the 

 purple-grey calms of September, and November 

 leaning in mist across the dusk of wavering 

 horizons is other than azure-robed and cirrus- 

 crowned May moving joyously across a glorious 



163 



