TO BRIGHTON 



but nothing more is visible. The plain is the 

 vaster for its vague uncertainty. From the north 

 comes down the wind, out of the brown autumn 

 light, from the woods below and twenty miles of 

 stubble. Its stratum and current is eight hundred 

 feet deep. 



Against my chest, coming up from the plough 

 down there (the old plough, with the shaft moving 

 on a framework with wheels), it hurls itself against 

 the green ramparts, and bounds up savagely at de- 

 lay. The ears are filled with a continuous sense 

 of something rushing past ; the shoulders go back 

 square; an iron-like feeling enters into the sinews. 

 The air goes through my coat as if it were gauze, 

 and strokes the skin like a brush. 



The tide of the wind, like the tide of the sea, 

 swirls about, and its cold push at the first causes a 

 lifting feeling in the chest a gulp and pant as 

 if it were too keen and strong to be borne. Then 

 the blood meets it, and every fibre and nerve is 

 filled with new vigour. I cannot drink enough 

 of it. This is the north wind. 



High as is the hill, there are larks yonder singing 

 higher still, suspended in the brown light. Turn- 

 ing away at last and tracing the fosse, there is, at 

 the point where it is deepest and where there is 

 some trifling shelter, a flat hawthorn bush. It has 

 grown as flat as a hurdle, as if trained espalierwise 

 17 257 



