"WORLD-STRANGENESS " 51 



whose language and customs and thoughts are not ours. 

 That " world-strangeness," which William Watson and 

 his fellow-poets prattle in rhyme about, those, at all 

 events, who have what they call the "note of moder- 

 nity " in their pipings, is not in me as in them. The 

 blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, 

 the animals, the wind, and rain, and sun, and stars are 

 never strange to me ; for I am in and of and am one 

 with them; and my flesh and the soil are one, and 

 the heat in my blood and in the sunshine are one, 

 and the winds and tempests and my passions are one. 

 I feel the "'strangeness" only with regard to my fellow - 

 men, especially in towns, where they exist in conditions 

 unnatural to me, but congenial to them; where they 

 are seen in numbers and in crowds, in streets and 

 houses, and in all places where they gather together; 

 when I look at them, their pale civilised faces, their 

 clothes, and hear them eagerly talking about things 

 that do not concern me. They are out of my world 

 the real world. All that they value, and seek and 

 strain after all their lives long, their works and sports 

 and pleasures, are the merest baubles and childish 

 things ; and their ideals are all false, and nothing 

 but by-products, or growths, of the artificial life 

 little funguses cultivated in heated cellars. 



In such moments we sometimes feel a kinship with, 

 and are strangely drawn to, the dead, who were not 

 as these ; the long, long dead, the men who knew 

 not life in towns, and felt no strangeness in sun and 



