•THE DEWY MORN' 233 



divine flame lighted in her with Hfe would burn on to the 

 last moment. 



* Felise's heart was lost before she saw him. She lost 

 it amid the flowers of the meadow, the wind on the hiJl, by 

 the rushing stream. She lost it in her study among her 

 books, her poetry of old Greece — songs of the ' Violet 

 Land ' — her ' Odyssey ' and dramas of Sophocles and 

 iEschylus ; among the stars that swept by over the hill ; 

 by the surge that ran up and kissed her feet. The pointed 

 grass stole it from her ; the fresh leaves of spring demanded 

 it ; all things beautiful took it from her. Her heart was 

 lost long since. 



' The streamlet in the woods is full before the dove 

 alights to drink at it ; the flower in the grass has expanded 

 before the butterfly comes. A great passion does not 

 leap into existence as violets sprang up beneath the white 

 feet of Aphrodite. It has grown first. The grapes have 

 ripened in the sun before they are plucked for wine. 



' Her vigour of life was very great ; yet it was not that 

 that sent her to the fields and woods, to the hill-top and 

 the shore ; nor the abounding physical vigour which 

 forced her broad chest through the clear green sea ; nor 

 the strong muscle hidden in the rounded arm which drove 

 her boat over the waves. The soul that inspired the effort 

 was the love that was growing within her.'* 



She walks, she runs, she swims, she rows, the fine 

 flower of all that Wiltshire downland to which the novelist 

 has added the sea. Her heart ' put a feeling ' into what- 

 ever she saw ; she brought the beauty to them. This is, 

 perhaps, one of Jefferies' inconsistencies. He had no 

 system, and he was not always studied in his expressions. 

 I do not think he means that there was no beauty 

 there before, but rather that she, the supreme expression 

 of natural beauty, came to the fields and the hills as the 

 dawn to set free a spirit already there. It is incon- 

 ceivable to me that such joy as hers and that of other 

 lovers in the presence of Nature should be merely as a 



* The Dewy Morn. 



