Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/276

ÆT. 38] very clear, but a little pillowy cloud kept dragging and always changing yet always there, over the top of the little rocky islet. All the islands, whether sloping or sheer rocks, went right into the sea without a hand's breadth of beach anywhere; and, little thing as that seems, I suppose it is this which gives the air of romanticism to these strange islands. Close by the sea lay the many gables (black wood with green turf-roofs) of the farm of Kirkjubae (Kirkby), a little white-washed church being the nearest to the sea, while close under the basalt cliff was the ruin of a stone mediæval church: a most beautiful and poetical place it looked to me, but more remote and melancholy than I can say, in spite of the flowers and grass and bright sun: it looked as if you might live for a hundred years before you would ever see ship sailing into the bay there; as if the old life of the saga-time had gone, and the modern life never reached the place.

"We hastened down, along the high mowing-grass of the home-field, full of buttercups and marsh-marigolds, and so among the buildings: the long-nosed cadaverous parson who guided us took us first to the ruin, which he said had never been finished, as the Reformation had stopped the building of it: in spite of which story, it is visibly not later than 1340 in date, which fact I, with some qualms, stoutly asserted, to the parson's disgust, though 'tis quite a new fault to me to find local antiquaries post-date their antiquities: anyhow it was, or had been, a rich and beautiful Decorated chapel without aisles, and for all I know had never been finished: thence we went into the more modern church (such a flower-bed as its roof was!) which was nevertheless interesting from its having a complete set of bench-ends richly carved (in