Page:The Poet's Chantry pg 166.jpg

166 of the cloud—not guardian of the sun's rays merely, but "the sun's treasurer"; the course of the south-west wind, regnant and imperious; and that "heroic sky," beneath whose light "few of the things that were ever done upon earth are great enough" to have dared the doing. Not Wordsworth himself has more graciously sung of the daffodil. And who has so understandingly praised the modest yet prevailing grass of the fields, or the trees of July, or given so discerning a study to the gentle "Colour of Life"?

Up and down upon the earth, to and fro upon it, wander the children of men; but few indeed may be trusted to catch the authentic Spirit of Place. Scarcely even our beloved Robert Louis, it would seem, since we have his own record that the act of voyaging was an end in itself—there being

But to the eyes of this woman there is not the same blue in more than a single zenith. "Spirit of place!" she cries in one most characteristic passage, "It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name. . . . The untravelled spirit of place—not to be pursued, for it never flies, but always to be discovered, never absent, without variation—lurks in the byways and rules over the tower, indestructible, an indescribable unity. It awaits us always in its ancient and eager freshness. It is sweet and nimble within its immemorial boundaries, but it never crosses them. . . . Was ever journey too hard or too long, that had to pay such a visit? And if by good fortune it is