He walked the world,
either blind to the beauty round him, and trying to compose instead
some little scrap of beauty in his own self-imprisoned thoughts; or
else he was looking out consciously and spasmodically for views,
effects, emotions, images; something striking and uncommon which would
suggest a poetic figure, or help out a description, or in some way
re-furnish his mind with thought. From which method it befell, that
his lamp of truth was too often burnt out just when it was needed; and
that, like the foolish virgins, he had to go and buy oil when it
was too late; or failing that, to supply its place with some baser
artificial material.
That day, however, he was fortunate enough; for wandering and
scrambling among the rocks, at a dead low spring tide, he came upon
a spot which would have made a poem of itself better than all Elsley
ever wrote, had he, forgetting all about Fra Dolcino, Italy, priests,
and tyrants, set down in black and white just what he saw; provided,
of course, that he had patience first to see the same.
It was none other than that ghastly chasm across which Thurnall had
been so miraculously swept, on the night of his shipwreck. The same
ghastly chasm: but ghastly now no longer; and as Elsley looked down,
the beauty below invited him, and the coolness also; for the sun beat
on the flat rock above till it scorched the feet, and dazzled the eye,
and crisped up the blackening sea-weeds; while every sea-snail crept
to hide itself under the bladder-tangle, and nothing dared to peep or
stir save certain grains of gunpowder, which seemed to have gone mad,
so merrily did they hop about upon the surface of the fast evaporating
salt-pools.
Pages:
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260