HISTORY AND THE PARISH 177 



crescent, utters his passionate pulsating song, so rapid 

 and passionate that it seems impossible and unfit that it 

 should end except in death, yet suddenly ceasing as it 

 lands again upon the samphire or the thrift. The spirit 

 was as quicksilver in the corners of her eyes, as quicksilver 

 in the heart. Such a maid she must have been as the 

 bard vv^ould have thought to send out the thrush to woo 

 for him, when he heard the bird of ermine breast singing 

 from the new-leaved hazel at dawn, on the edge of a 

 brook among the steep woods — singing artfully with a 

 voice like a silver bell — solemnly, too, so as to seem to 

 be performing a sacrifice — and amorously, bringing balm 

 to lovers' hearts and inspiring the bard to send by him a 

 message to the sun of all maidens that she, white as the 

 snow of the first winter night, should come out to the 

 green woods to him. She had lived for generations on 

 the moor, for generations upon generations, and this was 

 what she had gained from heather and furze and crag and 

 seawind and sunshine tempered by no trees — inextinguish- 

 able laughter. But she was inarticulate. She milked the 

 cows, made butter, baked bread, kept the peat fire burning 

 and tended her children. When she talked, I asked for 

 more cream. Perhaps after several more generations have 

 passed she will be a poet and astonish the world with a 

 moorland laughter of words that endure. 



Everything in that house was old or smooth and bright 

 with use, and the hollowed threshold of the doorway in 

 the sun put me in mind of a hundred old things and of 

 their goodliness to mortal eyes — the wrecked ship's ribs, 

 their bolt-holes rusty, that stand among nettles as gate- 

 posts — the worn dark stones that rock to the tread among 



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