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(5)

they spread their garments, they rose up and the wind rose and
the waves rose and through the house there lifted itself one
sullen wave of doom which curled and crashed and the whole
earth seemed ruining and washing away in water.

III

      But what after all, is one night? A short space,
especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird
sings, a cock crows, aor a faint green quickens, like a turning
leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to
night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them
equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen;
they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear plantets, plates of
brightness. The autumn tress, ravaged as they are, take on the
flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral
caves where gold letters and marble pages describe death in
battle and how bones far away bleach and burn in Indian sands.
The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of
harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and
smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the beach.
      It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence and all its
toil, divine goodness had drawn the curtain and displayed behind
it, single, distinct, the hare erect, the wave falling, the
boat rocking, which, did we deserve them should be ours always.
But alas - divine goodness, twitching the cord, draws the curtain;
it does not please him; he covers his treasures in a drench of

 


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