4 MY DEVON YEAR 



the oncoming of Winter. On such a day content 

 comes whispered by a falHng leaf, or is written upon 

 the fringes of sequestered woods, where the birch, 

 before bud-break, dwells in an amethystine mist about 

 her silver stem. 



The winds, indeed, often and at all times in the 

 yearly pilgrimage utter aloud the secret of the day, 

 and so reveal the tale they have gleaned from earth 

 and sky and the cloudland of eternal change between 

 them. Naked, winter boughs cry it painfully ; and 

 sometimes, in the upper chambers of the air, serene 

 and calm above mundane storm, the high clouds wheel 

 and turn their chariots of light into the word one 

 went to seek. The sea holds the secret, and its 

 messages ride upon stinging spindrifts, torn from 

 off the waves ; roll in organ songs along lonely 

 beaches ; lull their burden to mere moaning upon the 

 blind cliff-faces. With many a kiss the sea will 

 whisper it, will write it hugely above her glimmering 

 ocean -facing ridges of rock, will thunder it in her 

 caverns, will spout it from the nostrils of her leviathans, 

 will sing it in sunshine on a million simultaneous 

 dimples, will cry it where the sea-bird presses his 

 breast against the wind, and slants upwards or down- 

 wards upon that invisible inclined plane. 



Nor does the obvious often intrude upon these 

 wanderings after buried treasure. The wind may 

 howl along its winter ways in the tree-tops, yet wake 

 no sense of sinister power, of storms or sorrows ; it 

 may utter music proper to the season of opening 



