Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/275

 and look up at the sun from under the surface, to see how the light seems to spread and clot and split in the water like sour cream poured into a cup of tea. The sun, which is so ruddy in the evening air, is a pale milky white when seen from under water.

A kind of madness of pleasure fills the heart of the solitary sunset swimmer. To splash and riot in that miraculous color and tumult of breaking water seems an effective answer to all the grievances of earth. To float, feeling the poise and encircling support of those lapsing pillows of liquid, is mirth beyond words. To swim just beyond the line of the big breakers, dropping a foot now and then to feel that bottom is not too far away—to sprawl inward with a swashing comber while the froth boils about his shoulders—to watch the light and color prismed in the curl and slant of every wave, and the quick vanishing of brightness and glory once the sun is off the sea—all this is the matter of poems that no one can write.

The sun drops over the flat glitter of the inland lagoons; the violet and silver and rose-flushed foam are gone from the ocean; the sand is gray and damp and chilly. Down the line of the shore comes an airplane roaring through the upper regions of dazzling sunlight, with brightness on its varnished wings. The lighthouse at the Inlet has begun to twinkle its golden flash, and supper will soon be on the table. The solitary swimmer takes one last regretful plunge through a sluicing hill of