Page:The Heart of England.djvu/142

 emotion. It scorns afterthought as the winds are flouting the penitent half moon.

A squadron of wild fowl races through the crystal air; the mind expands with their speed, and tries to share it, and believes that it succeeds. A heron goes over solemnly, high up, and as if upon some starry business in that profound, bright air; the mind at once attunes itself to that majesty and directness and simplicity—

A starling sits on the weathercock with ruffled feathers watching the sky with one eye and then with the other, and his form and voice are sharp and pure as they joyfully pierce the air. The weathercock itself shines like Mars. Together, they speak of the cold and vigour and health and beauty which abide somewhere in the sky to-day and not inaccessibly.

High above me, here and there upon the road, stand oast-houses, with their conical roofs ruddy against the sky, and over them the newly painted white cowls point eastward, and in their whiteness seem to have been set as a signal to say that it is the west wind after frost that has made the world what it is; they point out a road which, if I could follow it, would lead to the very court of mind and beauty, yonder, afar off, where the wind and the heron and the wild ducks are going. There I might learn to realise the long, joyous curves in which thought and action and life itself sweep onward to their triumphs…

But I know well that long hopes and wide, vaulting