Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/312

 feels the truth of the poet's dictum that "What's worth the saying can't be said."

Nature here wore an unfamiliar aspect to us; the wide marshland was beautiful, but beautiful with a strange and novel beauty. Now and then were infrequent sign-posts, old and leaning, each with one solitary arm pointing eastward, laconically inscribed "To the Sea," not to any house or hamlet be it noticed. They might as well have been inscribed, it seemed to us in our philosophy, "To the World's end!" Here the black sleek rooks and restless white-winged gulls appeared to possess a common meeting ground; the rooks for a wonder were quiet, being silently busy, presumably intent after worms; not so the gulls, for ever and again some of them would rise and whirl round and round, restlessly uttering peevish cries the while. Neither the cry of gull nor caw of rook are musical; in truth, they are grating and harsh, yet they are suggestive of the open air, and are, therefore, pleasing to the ear of the town-dweller, and lull him to rest in spite of their discordance with a sense of deep refreshment.

Shakespeare sings of "the uncertain glory of an April day." He might, even with greater truth, have written September in place of April; for in the former month the weather is just as changeful, and the skies are finer with more vigorous cloud-scapes; then, too, the fields and foliage "have put their glory on," and at times under a sudden sun-burst, especially in the clear air that comes after rain, the many-tinted woods become a miracle of colour such that the painter with the richest palette cannot realise. We