AN OLIVE GROVE 107 



the hues of a dove's neck, the bright green, 

 the dark purple, the soft ultramarine, the 

 deep blue of a blade of burnished steel, 

 there glancing in the sun like diamonds, 

 here rippling into a lacelike net of snowy 

 foam." 



There is yet another reason why this 

 "Saracen Grove" is most attractive. It 

 is so placed above the Mediterranean, and 

 not too far above it as to command a long 

 stretch of the irregular and mountainous 

 coast line, and so make possible and fasci- 

 nating what I will call the imaginative 

 localization of history. As a man rests 

 there under the ancient olive trees, he is 

 sure to call up the great past in empire, 

 or in art, or in literature; then he looks 

 along the coast until he fixes upon a rela- 

 tive point ; then he thinks: "Just over there 

 they landed," or "Just over there he was 

 born," or "Just over there it all took 

 place." In this way you picture the past, 

 reproduce person and scene, and fling 

 your heart hotly out into the vast region 



