that seems to be
emphasized--something seems to beckon to me and to invite me to take to
my wings and just glide along--without beating of wings--as if I could
glide without sinking, glide and still keep my height... If you see the
sun at all--as I did not on this day of days--he stands away up, very
distant and quite aloof. He looks more like the moon than like his own
self, white and heatless and lightless, as if it were not he at all from
whom all this transparency and visibility proceeded.

I have lived in southern countries, and I have travelled rather far for
a single lifetime. Like an epic stretch my memories into dim and ever
receding pasts. I have drunk full and deep from the cup of creation.
The Southern Cross is no strange sight to my eyes. I have slept in the
desert close to my horse, and I have walked on Lebanon. I have cruised
in the seven seas and seen the white marvels of ancient cities reflected
in the wave of incredible blueness. But then I was young. When the years
began to pile up, I longed to stake off my horizons, to flatten out my
views. I wanted the simpler, the more elemental things, things cosmic
in their associations, nearer to the beginning or end of creation. The
parrot that flashed through "nutmeg groves" did not hold out so much
allurement as the simple gray-and-slaty junco. The things that are
unobtrusive and differentiated by shadings only--grey in grey above
all--like our northern woods, like our sparrows, our wolves--they held
a more compelling attraction than orgies of colour and screams of sound.
So I came home to the north. On days like this, however, I should like
once more to fly out and see the tireless wave and the unconquerable
rock. But I should like to see them from afar and dimly only--as Moses
saw the promised land. Or I should like to point them out to a younger
soul and remark upon the futility and innate vanity of things.

And because these days take me out of myself, because they change my
whole being into a very indefinite longing and dreaming, I wilfully blot
from my vision whatever enters. If I meet a tree, I see it not. If
I meet a man, I pass him by without speaking. I do not care to be
disturbed. I do not care to follow even a definite thought. There is
sadness in the mood, such sadness as enters--strange to say--into a
great and very definitely expected disappointment. It is an exceedingly
delicate sadness--haughty, aloof like the sun, and like him cool to the
o