THE WHITE LIGHT 



HE time is noontide, and the day one of 

 North- East wind, uniform grey sky, and 

 horizons restricted. Upon the hills and 

 along the hedges snow still lingers, and 

 here and there, over surfaces that possess a lower 

 temperature than the surrounding scene, it persists in 

 streak and patch. Distance is wholly hidden by the 

 down-crowding grey. There is no promise of the sun, 

 but the cold, clear light — widely diffused and intense 

 — offers a phase of truth. It searches all things within 

 a narrow radius ; there is little mystery about it ; no 

 beautiful secrets stand half-revealed in tender shadow, 

 half-concealed in direct sunshine. This light spreads 

 evenly, like a dawn upon the waking of the world, 

 shows the leaf- spike of the wild arum breaking out 

 of the earth, the lengthening, softening catkins of the 

 hazel, the seedlings of the wild cresses and galium 

 folk, the fruiting mosses, the greys and green-greys 

 and golden-greens of that inner robe of filmy living 

 thinofs — lichens and liverworts — that sit next to the 

 red earth-mother's own bosom, and love the chilly 

 moisture of grey February. 



This candid light surrounds one with a sort of ring 



i6 



