MARBLE CLIFFS 59 



they breathe of ceaseless war, of agonised battle with 

 the West wind and all its unnumbered hosts of the 

 sea. Setting sunlight gilds their slaty shale, and 

 brightens it into polished ebony and into gold ; they 

 frown at the evening light until its glory dies and 

 the foam-ridges glimmer grey ; then familiar darkness 

 huddles down upon them, and they wait alert, watch- 

 ful, for the first sigh of the awakened enemy, the first 

 throb and spout of some giant wave at their feet. 

 These cliffs impress some spirits with aversion, yet 

 from others they win such sympathy in their struggle 

 as Prometheus himself won, but seldom the scorched 

 and blasted crags of Caucasus that made his pillow. 



From our black northern precipices to wander South, 

 where sandstone stains the Channel with its cheerful 

 ruddiness, or marble limestone spreads in shining 

 pebble beaches, is to change every phase of outlook ; 

 for cliffs and headlands and upspringing peaks all 

 differ as much in quality and in power of suggestion 

 as the seas that sweep and roar in storm, or tinkle and 

 ripple on summer days about them. 



Less force and more beauty than exists upon the 

 North coast shall be found where limestone rises and 

 sheds an opalescent milky light into the blue water, 

 where placid tides slowly wash away and solve the 

 stone. Here are the very habitations and play- 

 grounds of sunbeams, that leap and twinkle among 

 the networks of delicate clefts and crannies woven 

 into a pattern on the rock-faces, that nestle under 

 the shadows or laugh along the stairways and touch 



