Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/823



S you look down the seaward level of the marsh under a cloudless sun still mounting, and near the slack water of its noon, the shagginess before you is a close-cropped fur. There is no chance for the grass blade of double face—that owns both radiance and dark.

But later and late, when spines of blue shade from hardy bordering savins dart out across the marsh, like skaters at pastime, then its spaces are modelled and moulded into hassocks of dimpled shadow.

You discover it has variation, whereas morning laid it before you flat as a pan. The plain places are now made rough for your delight. The happy eye runs among these modulations as an accustomed finger on the keyboard, making a music from such rhythm. The music of the eye.

Over its hollows are shaken intricate patterns of bearded grasses, knotted fantastically. Along little runs of babbling sea-water are sown long thin acres of moving purple, soon to be garnered of evening into the diurnal harvestry of shadows.

The west wind that rears strange cities of pearl from a horizon of mingled indigo and magenta, and domes them in aerial blue, lets loose a scurrying army of shadows. They coast on the plain; like