GOING WESTWARD 229 



outward and visible signs of a great thought. Out of the 

 darkness in which they are submerged starts a crying of 

 pewits and partridges; and overhead and close together 

 the wild duck fly west into the cold gilded blue. 



At dawn a shallow crystal river runs over stones and 

 waves green hair past ancient walls of flint, tall towers 

 and many windows, with vines about the mullions, past 

 desolate grass of old elmy meads, high-gated, and 

 umbrageous roads winding white by carven gateways, 

 under sycamore and elm and ash and many alders and 

 haughty avenues of limes, past an old great church, past 

 a park where elms and oaks and bushy limes hide a ruin 

 among nettles and almost hide a large stone house from 

 which peacocks shout, past a white farm, red-tiled, that 

 stands with a village of its own thatched barns, cart- 

 lodges and sheds under walnut and elm, enclosed within 

 a circuit of old brick with a tower that looks along the 

 waters. It is a place where man has known how to aid 

 his own stateliness by that of Nature. The trees are 

 grand and innumerable, but they stand about in aristo- 

 cratic ways; the bright young water does not flout the 

 old walls but takes the shadow of antiquity from them 

 and lends them dew-dropping verdure in return. The 

 pebbles under the waves are half of them fallen from 

 the walls; the curves round which they bend are of 

 masonry; so that it is unapparent and indifferent whether 

 the masonry has been made to fit the stream or the stream 

 persuaded to admit the masonry. As I look, I think of 

 it as Statius thought of the Surrentine villa when he prayed 

 that Earth would be kind to it and not throw off that 

 ennobling yoke. Everywhere the river rushes and shines, 

 or roars unseen behind trees. The sun is warm and the 



