Such hours are the
peculiar joy of those who hold the key of the Imagination in their
grasp and are able to unlock the gate of dreams, or make themselves the
companion of the great explorers in the realms of truth and beauty.
These are the secret joys which people solitude and make the quiet days
one long draught of inspiration.
In such a mood our quest began and ended. We skirted the beach; we
plunged deep into the recesses of the woods; we stretched ourselves on
the broad expanse of greensward in the shade of the great boughs; we
followed the rivulet to the hushed and shadowy solitude where it issued
from the moss-grown rock; wherever we bent our step the song of the sea
followed us, and the day was calm and cool as with its breadth and
freshness. The island had its own beauty; the beauty of virgin forests
and untrodden paths, of a certain fragrant sweetness gathered in years
of untroubled solitude, of a certain pastoral repose such as comes to
Nature when man is remote but that which gave us the thrill of
something strangely sweet and satisfying, something apart from the
world we had left, was not anything we saw with eye. All that was
visible was beautiful, but it was a loveliness not unfamiliar; it was
the invisible continually breaking in upon our consciousness that laid
us under a spell.
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