HISTORY AND THE PARISH 155 



smallest of perforated slate windows at the base, has a 

 look of age and rusticity. In the churchyard is a rough 

 grey cross of stone — a disc supported by a pillar. It is 

 surrounded by the waving noiseless tamarisk. It looks 

 northward over the sandhills at a blue bay, guarded on the 

 west by tall grey cliffs which a white column surmounts. 



For a time the nearer sandhills have rested and clothed 

 themselves in bird's-foqt trefoil, thyme, eyebright and 

 short turf : but once the church was buried beneath them. 

 Between the round hill and the church a tiny stream 

 sidles along through a level hiding-place of flags and 

 yellow flag flowers, of purple figwort and purple orchis 

 and green grass. 



A cormorant flies low across the sky — that sable bird 

 which seems to belong to the old time, the time of badger 

 and beaver, of ancient men who rose up out of the crags 

 of this coast. To them, when the cuckoo first called 

 one April, came over the blue sea a small brown ship, 

 followed by three seals, and out of it descended a Chris- 

 tian from Ireland, black-haired, blue-eyed, with ready 

 red lips and deep sweet voice and spoke to them, all alone. 

 He told them of a power that ruled the blue waters and 

 shifting sands, who could move the round green hill to 

 the rock of the white gulls; taller and grimmer than the 

 cloven headland yet sweet and gentle as the fennel above; 

 deep-voiced as the Atlantic storm, tender also as the sedge- 

 warbler in the flags below the hill; whose palace was 

 loftier than the blue to which the lark was now soaring, 

 milder and richer than the meadows in May and ever- 

 lasting; and his attendants were more numerous and 

 bright than the herring under a moon of frost. The milk- 

 pails should be fuller and the grass deeper and the corn 



