47 



CHAPTER XI. 



AR different to all our old-time conceptions 

 is the dawn of a New World May-day in 

 the solitudes of the primeval forest ! No 

 groups of villagers, no merry dances, no 

 gaily-decked teams of horses — nothing but 

 the grey silence of day-break, and the all- 

 extending forest. 



As I stand, the woods close in around with their 

 array of shadowy forms looming through the uncertain 

 light of dawn. A space further on a low boulder forms 

 a ready couch. Here the ghostly army of the forest 

 fades away, for below is the sea, now lying placid and 

 dumb, with a faint slow heave of its fair bosom, and a 

 mute, passionless appeal which draws one's thoughts 

 out to it and steals them away seaward — over to that 

 Old World from which the face was so resolutely turned. 

 These are the moments of reverie, undisturbed by any 

 sound save the ripple of the tiny waterfall near at hand. 

 Here it is always water— 'little streamlets splashing 

 from every hillside and chasing one another down 

 among the hollows and shallows and the littered 

 granite ; down, down, and away headlong to the sea — 



"Run home, little streams, 

 With your lapfuls of stars and dreams : ' — 



singing, as they run, little intermittent snatches of 

 strange music ; now like the faint, far tinkling of 

 silver bells, and again like the sedge-bird babbling by 



