THE HOME OF THE WEST WIND 



Y winding ways from a lofty land I ap- 

 proached the sea ; and my road sank 

 along one side of a sun-scorched valley, 

 over against which there spread the spec- 

 tacle of a more shadowed hill southwards. Here 

 corn climbed aloft from the trout stream in the 

 combe-bottom, and a green elm or two, rising above 

 hedgerows, was resting-place for the eye. Ahead, 

 framed in a hurricane-cradle of terrific cliffs, spread 

 forth the sea — the playground of the West wind — 

 an expanse of unutterable blue to-day, its power 

 lulled to the throb of sleeping pulses along the 

 shore. 



Cots and thirsty hedges of tamarisk powdered with 

 dust filled my foreground, and on the right of them 

 a scarp of stone, gloomy and savage even under 

 the sun, climbed aloft out of the sea and rolled in 

 wide undulations landward beneath a running flame 

 of the autumn gorse and a gleam of pink heather 

 between brake-ferns and grasses. The blue back 

 of the sea stretched from the fall of this cliff 

 across the horizon, and vanished presently where a 

 headland rose southward and framed in that spacious 



L 145 



