TIME PASSESthem, to abolish their significance in the landscape;to continue, as one walked by the sea, to marvel howbeauty outside mirrored beauty within.

Did Nature supplement what man advanced? Didshe complete what he began? With equal compla-cence she saw his misery, condoned his meanness, andacquiesced in his torture. That dream, then, of shar-ing, completing, finding in solitude on the beach ananswer, was but a reflection in a mirror, and the mir-ror itself was but the surface glassiness which forms inquiescence when the nobler powers sleep beneath?Impatient, despairing yet loth to go (for beauty offersher lures, has her consolations), to pace the beachwas impossible; contemplation was unendurable; themirror was broken.

[Mr. Carmichael brought out a volume of poemsthat spring, which had an unexpected success. Thewar, people said, had revived their interest in poetry.]7

Night after night, summer and winter, the torment ofstorms, the arrow-like stillness of fine weather, heldtheir court without interference. Listening (had therebeen any one to listen) from the upper rooms of theempty house only gigantic chaos streaked with light-ning could have been heard tumbling and tossing, asthe winds and waves disported themselves like theamorphous bulks of leviathans whose brows are piercedby no light of reason, and mounted one on top ofanother, and lunged and plunged in the darkness orthe daylight (for night and day, month and year ranshapelessly together) in idiot games, until it seemed as157

Resize Images  

Select Pane

Berg Materials
 

View Pane