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(11)

her old silly song. Her message to a world now beginning to
break into the voluntary and irrepressible loveliness of spring
was transmitted by the lurch of her body and the leer of her
smile and in them no less than in the bleat of lamb and the bud
of cowslip were the broken syllables of a revelation more
confused but more profound (could one have read it) than any
accorded to solitary watchers, pacing the beach at midnight, and
receiving as they stirred the pool, revelations of an extra-
ordinary kind.

V

      For to them, as the evenings lengthened came the strangest
imaginations, the most authentic beckonings, in the sunset, on
the moonlit evenings when it seemed as if they were haled from
their flesh and that flesh were turned to atoms which drove
before the wind, and they must needs fly with arms stretched and
hair blowing to the wild shining west or the flashing stars, or
the tumbling waves. For it was as if the waves broke in them;
the stars flashed in their hearts; and the trees' strength, the
cliffs' nobility, the clouds' majesty were so brought together
purposely to assemble the scattered parts of the vision within.
      For a week perhaps towards the end of May this unity per-
sisted,   The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright,
like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity,
was laid out on fields wide eyed and watchful, entirely careless
of what was done or thought by the beholders. Nevertheless in

 


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