of Hecla in the Hebrides, that gives majesty Summer 

 and wonder to the village green, and delivers Clouds, 

 mystery on the horizons of the frequented 

 common. It is like light, whose incalculable 

 arrivals are myriad, but which when most 

 steadfast is most dreamlike, a phantom : as 

 moonlight on the mysterious upturned face 

 of great woods ; or as when, on illimitable 

 moors, the dew glistens on the tangled bent 

 and pale flood of orchis where the lapwings 

 nest ; or in golden fire, as when at the solstice 

 the sorrel in the meadows and the tansy in 

 the wastes and the multitude of the dandelion 

 are transmuted into a mirage of red and yellow 

 flame ; or in rippling flood of azure and silver, 

 when the daysprings loosen ; or in scarlet and 

 purple and chrysoprase, when the South is as 

 a clouded opal and the West is the silent con- 

 flagration of the world. There is not a hidden 

 glen among the lost hills, there is not an 

 unvisited shore, there is not a city swathed 

 in smoke and drowned in many clamours, 

 where light is not a continual miracle, where 

 from dayset to dawn, from the rising of the 

 blue to the gathering of shadow, the wind is 

 not habitual as are the reinless, fierce, unswerv- 

 ing tides of the sea. Beauty, and Light, and 

 Wind : they who are so common in our com- 

 panionship and so continual in mystery, are 



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