A SUMMER-CLAD HEATH 175 



life, from hill to valley, from valley to hill again. 

 Even under sunshine and blue sky the great tors 

 lack not sublimity ; but if a man be brave enouo-h 

 to face them at another season and wrestle in Winter 

 with the North wind, he shall find his reward. Then, 

 wrapped in snow or curtains of mist, these hills rise 

 like the ghosts of their former selves under a grey 

 battle of low clouds ; and the rivers howl aloud, 

 making such hoarse music as they who only see their 

 shrunken volume and hear their baby prattle under 

 summer skies shall never guess at. 



In the moth-time and through many a twilight 

 gloaming I have passed among the old stones scattered 

 here, along the alignments, and through the dim 

 circles that tell of a stone-man's faith or mark his 



grave. 



' Scarce images of life, one here, one there. 

 Lay vast and edgeways ; like a dismal cirque 

 Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor, 

 When the chill rain begins at shut of eve." 



So Keats in the " Hyperion," and though this 

 image is imputed to his wanderings in Cumberland 

 or Scotland, I choose rather to believe that one 

 of our Dartmoor monuments awakened it. For 

 "Hyperion" came forth in 1820, after the poet's 

 visit to Teignmouth ; and from that litde town the 

 grey girth of Hey Tor, the steep of Lustleigh, and 

 the crown of huge Rippon must have been mirrored 

 not seldom in the eyes of Keats. I will stake my 

 love of him that he trod them too, and moved upon 



