THE HOME OF THE WEST WIND 147 



lash the shore Hke a liquid scourge ; I witness a hurri- 

 cane under these altitudes, and hear the song of the 

 stone answer each wave's wild challenge as the wind 

 strikes the precipices, and the sea drapes each blind 

 face of the rocks with spouting beards and brows of 

 white water. 



Off shore great sunflashes played on the blue ; 

 the floor of the empty beach-bed glimmered at my 

 feet ; behind m|e lay the cottages at the combe-foot, 

 all dotted with yellow lichens, under shining slate ; 

 and spread about them were stacks, outbuildings, 

 dried grass lands, and straight walls of the prevalent 

 black stone. In the air trembled a ceaseless song 

 of the sea, the solemn primal anthem of the West 

 wind played in a treble key to-day ; under my feet 

 lay rocks worn smooth by weight of unnumbered 

 waves ; and over their surfaces passed ribs, and veins, 

 and delicate filigrane of pearly marble, here netted 

 like the mesh on a ripe melon, here as it had been 

 a map of some fairy country unrolled upon the stone. 

 The hill acclivities, seen from beneath, shone under 

 the sun's eye, revealing a cleavage mathematical in 

 their regularity of seam and fissure where they sloped 

 upward to shaggy terraces of thrift and blackthorn ; 

 while beneath them spread the beach. Here scarcely 

 a human soul was visible. At the edge of the sea a 

 solitary man, dwarfed to bird-like size by distance, 

 moved with a basket and probed under the seaweed- 

 hidden ledges ; in a narrow arm of the sea, like little 

 pink pearls, some children bathed ; and above them, 



