The brown rippling rush will be fresh with gathered 

 Tides, rains and dews and the unsullied issues of 

 wellsprings and sunlit sources. 



The tide-flow may be more beautiful and 

 obvious seen from the high shores of certain 

 estuaries, as, say, from the Falmouth uplands, 

 or from the hillsides of our narrow Highland 

 sea-lochs, but the mind is deeplier impressed 

 and the imagination compelled by the more 

 obscure, menacing, and almost terrifying swift 

 arrivals along vast shallow estuaries, such as 

 The Wash or the inner reaches of Solway 

 Firth or by the Sands o' Dee. With what 

 abrupt turbulence the calms are violated, with 

 what a gathering sound the invisible host is 

 marshalled, with what impetuous surge the 

 immeasurable sortie advances ! Of a sudden 

 those little shallows in the sands, those little 

 weed-hung pools below slippery rocks covered 

 with mussel and dog-whelk, shiver. A faint 

 undulation thrills the still small world. A 

 shrimp darts from a sand-mound : a blood-red 

 anemone thrusts out feathered antennae : now 

 one, now another shell-fish stirs, lifts, gapes. 

 It is the response of the obscure, the in- 

 significant, and the silent, to that mighty 

 incalculable force which is hastening from the 

 fathomless depths and across countless leagues 

 of the great Sea. Soon the flood will come : 



44 



