146 MY DEVON YEAR 



scene. Heaven was cloudless and of an infinite clarity 

 — the work of the West wind and the Atlantic on their 

 loom of sea and sky. Under high noon these condi- 

 tions engender such a sharpness and intensity of seeing 

 that the least observant eye brightens thereat, the most 

 lack-lustre wanderer, sent hither by happy chance, 

 wakens into some added appreciation of life. 



Over a foreground of grey rocks I passed above 

 high-water mark, beside a spot where the little trout 

 stream from above found burial in the shining shingle. 

 Even at this breathless hour foam shone like a neck- 

 lace of silver round the throat of every sea-girt rock, 

 and bubbled in a glimmer of bursting beads where 

 dark grasses rose and fell at the waters' touch. 

 These seas take no rest ; these waves that roll 

 on the northern coasts of the West Country are 

 rarely at perfect peace. There is the weight of the 

 Atlantic behind this blue horizon. Tremendous latent 

 power lurks hidden always, and waits only for the 

 West wind to set it in motion. Silence has never 

 brooded here since the world began, and even under 

 the sunshine and the August glow of fair weather, 

 there is that in the sad cliff-brows and tremendous 

 spaces of the beach, left for a short hour naked by 

 the tide, that cries out of conditions far removed from 

 peace. 



In spirit I see the leaden billows tumbling into this 

 miscalled haven on the wings of a gale of wind ; I 

 hear the scream of the great seas when stinging 

 mists of spindrift are torn off their white scalps to 



