|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 27
It seemed a graceless thing to leave the carcasses of these brave
creatures uncovered there. So I stripped off branches of the trees,
and gathered bundles of fern and bracken, with which to conceal awhile
their bones from wolf and fowl. And him whom I had begun to love I
covered last, desiring he might but return, if only for a moment, to
bid me his strange farewell.
This done, I pushed through the undergrowth from the foot of the sunny
cliffs, and after wandering in the woods, came late in the afternoon,
tired out, to a ruinous hut. Here I rested, refreshing myself with the
unripe berries that grew near by.
I remained quite still in this mouldering hut looking out on the glens
where fell the sunlight. Some homely bird warbled endlessly on in her
retreat, lifted her small voice till every hollow resounded with her
content. Silvery butterflies wavered across the sun's pale beams,
sipped, and flew in wreaths away. The infinite hordes of the dust
raised their universal voice till, listening, it seemed to me their
tiny Babel was after all my own old, far-off English, sweet of the
husk.
Fate leads a man through danger to his delight. Me she had led among
woods. Nameless though many of the cups and stars and odours of the
flowers were to me, unfamiliar the little shapes that gamboled in fur
and feather before my face, here dwelt, mummy of all earth's summers,
some old ghost of me, sipper of sap, coucher in moss, quieter than
dust.
So sitting, so rhapsodising, I began to hear presently another
sound--the rich, juicy munch-munch of jaws, a little blunted maybe,
which yet, it seemed, could never cry Enough! to these sweet,
succulent grasses. I made no sign, waited with eyes towards the sound,
and pulses beating as if for a sweetheart. And soon, placid,
unsurprised, at her extreme ease, loomed into sight who but my
ox-headed Rosinante in these dells, cropping her delightful way along
in search of her drowned master.
I could but whistle and receive the slow, soft scrutiny of her
familiar eyes. I fancied even her bland face smiled, as might
elderliness on youth. She climbed near with bridle broken and
trailing, thrust out her nose to me, and so was mine again.
Sunlight left the woods. Wind passed through the upper branches. So,
with rain in the air, I went forward once more; not quite so headily,
perhaps, yet, I hope, with undiminished courage, like all earth's
travellers before me, who have deemed truth potent as modesty, and
themselves worth scanning print after.
IX
_A ... shop of rarities._
--GEORGE HERBERT.
A little before darkness fell we struck into a narrow road traversing
the wood. This, though apparently not much frequented, would at least
lead me into lands inhabited, so turning my face to the West, that I
might have light to survey as long as any gleamed in the sky, I
trudged on. But I went slow enough: Rosinante was lame; I like a
stranger to my body, it was so bruised and tumbled.
The night was black, and a thin rain falling when at last I emerged
from the interminable maze of lanes into which the wood-road had led
me. And glad I was to descry what seemed by the many lights shining
from its windows to be a populous village. A gay village also, for
song came wafted on the night air, rustic and convivial.
Hereabouts I overtook a figure on foot, who, when I addressed him,
turned on me as sharply as if he supposed the elms above him were
thick with robbers, or that mine was a voice out of the unearthly
hailing him.
I asked him the name of the village we were approaching. With small
dark eyes searching my face in the black shadow of night, he answered
in a voice so strange and guttural that I failed to understand a word.
He shook his fingers in the air; pointed with the cudgel he carried
under his arm now to the gloom behind us, now to the homely galaxy
before us, and gabbled on so fast and so earnestly that I began to
suppose he was a little crazed.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|