144 MY DEVON YEAR 



whether I have likewise persisted, and remained my 

 first young self despite all the winds of chance and 

 the waves of time. 



Though he stand steadfast in spirit, man's mental 

 structure must alter its shape under clean tempests of 

 knowledge, from increasing breadth of horizon, at the 

 riotous buffets of a growing intellect, and in the 

 variable weather of human experience. Yet nothing 

 from outside can hurt the substance of my inner life, 

 so that it is held together by reason, as the mat-grass 

 holds the fabric of the dune ; no vital thing can whelm 

 this spark of me while Nature lets it burn ; no hand 

 can choke it, poison it, ruin it, but my own. 



That was the venerable truth written in the 

 breaking waves, and scrawled by the wrack upon 

 the shore ; that was the secret of the sand-dunes, the 

 question they asked of me as I came back to them 

 with my thirty years of added life and, resting upon 

 their soft hearts, dreamed the old dreams again, but 

 listened to the new voices. 



