Old Junk

e expanse, a heap of sundered granite lying upon the horizon like a faint sunken cloud, like the floating body of a whale, like an area of opale

reams; a vision of sanctuary, of the place we shall never reach, a frail mirage of land then, a roseous spot which is not set in the sea, but floa

earth, a piece of the black world we know, that I can believe it is land, something to be found on the map, a

y, and a star by night, the real coast which stretches seaward to it, marching on either hand into the blue, confi

ast in this wind, for in it the delicate cliffs and the frail tinted fields inclined above them seem to tremble, a

ng, if our world till then had been without life and voice, with this shine that is an impalpable dust of gold, the quickened air, a

the passionate azure of the bugloss from hot and arid sand, and makes the blobs of sea-jelly in the pools expand like flowers, and

ches serpentine between barriers of meadowsweet, briers and fat grasses. Nearer to the sea the levels are of moist sand covered with a close matting of thyme, and herbage as c

st wind pours among the dunes, a warm and heavy torrent. There is no need to make a miracle of the appearance of life on our earth. Lif

arth children in her own likeness. The Boy and Miss Muffet beside me are no surprise. They are proper to the place. The salt water and the sand are still on their brown

ky than ours. They go where I doubt that I can follow. I cannot leave my hold upon the rocks and enter the place to which their late and aerial spirits are native. It is plain the earth is not a solid body. As their bodies, moving over the bright vacuity, grow unsubstanti