Page:The Heart of England.djvu/237

 moods as pass through the mind of a lonely man, during long hours in a place where the outside world does not disturb him and he lives on memory and pure reflection, are symbolised by those changes on the surface of the sea. Now it is one thing and now another; the growth is imperceptible and those moods that have passed are as hard to reconstruct as the links of a long, fluctuating reverie. For the most part it is grey, a grey full of meditation and discontent.

The heathland changes with the sea. Both take their thoughts and fancies from the sky. For this is a world of clouds; earth and sea are made by them what they are. They make the sea, and they make the little pools, blue, silver or grey, among the gorse. The clouds are always there; inhabiting a dome that is about fifty miles from the horizon up and down to the opposite horizon; and yet they are never the same.

Where do the clouds go?

The large white clouds, mountainous and of alabaster and with looks of everlastingness. I see them in the north at midday, making the hills seem level with the plain. I turn away my eyes and when next I look they are gone. They vanish like childish things. One day I made an appointment with another child to play marbles on the next morning; I never went; I forgot; I never saw the boy again, and I remember it now, for I never played marbles after that.

The high white halcyons of summer skies.

The distant, icy ranges of rounded pearl down which, in terrace after terrace, the sun walks like a king to the sea in May. As I watch they grow big like roses in the sun,