eir leaves,
The knights' dark strength is rising yet,
Clad in its wild-flower wreaths.
And yet along the mountain-paths
Rides forth that stately band,
A vision of the dim old days--
A dream of fairyland.

'It is the wide extent of these solitary wastes which makes them so
impressive, and gives them their influence over the imagination. Whether
seen at mid-day, when the gleams of sunlight are chasing one another
along the hill-side; or at sunset, when the long line of dusky moorland
lifts itself against the fading light of the western sky, the same
character of extent and freedom is impressed on the landscape, which
carries the fancy from hill to hill, and from valley to valley, and
leads it to imagine other scenes, of equal wildness, which the distant
hills conceal

'"Beyond their utmost purple rim."'

Perhaps the scenery of Dartmoor is never more impressive than under
those evening effects which have last been suggested. The singular
shapes assumed by the granite cappings of the tors are strongly
projected against the red light of the sunset, which gleams between the
many openings in the huge piles of rock, making them look like passages
into some unknown country beyond them, and suggesting that idea of
infinity which is afforded by no other object of sight in equal degree.
Meanwhile, the heather of the foreground is growing darker and darker;
and the only sound which falls upon the ear is that of the river far
below, or perhaps the flapping of some heron's wings, as he rises from
his rock in the stream and disappears westward--

'Where, darkly painted on the blood-red sky,
His figure floats along.'

CHAPTER V

The Teign

'Ting (whose banks were blest
By her beloved nymph dear Leman) which addrest,
And fully with herself determined before
To sing the Danish spoils committed on her shore,
When hither from the east they came in mighty swarms,
Nor could their native earth contain their numerous arms,
Their surcrease grew so great, as forced them at last
To seek another soil, as bees do when they cast;
And by their impious pride how hard she was bested,
When all the country swam with blood of Saxons shed.'

DRAYTON: _Poly-olbion_.

The Teign rises, as do most of the rivers in Devon, on Dartmoor, and
starts across the moorlands towards the north. After a few miles it is
joined by the Wallabrook,