It was just a
glimpse of something full of urgent haste, but pleasanter to watch
than to mix with; then we passed through a wilderness of little
houses, street after street, yard after yard. Presently we were
rushing away from it all past a lonely sea-creek that ran far up
into the low-lying land. That had a more silent life of its own;
old dusky hulks lay at anchor in the channel; the tide ebbed away
from mudflats and oozy inlets, the skeletons of worn-out boats
stood up out of the weltering clay. Gradually, as the sun went down
among orange stains and twisted cloud-wreaths, the creek narrowed
and beyond lay a mysterious promontory with shadowy woods and low
bare pasture-lands, with here and there a tower standing up or a
solitary sea-mark, or a hamlet of clustered houses by the water's
edge, while the water between grew paler and stiller, reflecting
the wan green of the sky. It is not easy to describe the effect of
this scene, thus magically transfigured, upon the mind; but it is a
very real and distinct emotion, though its charm depends upon the
fact that it shifts the reality of the world to a further point,
away from the definite shapes and colours, the tangible and visible
relations of things, which become for an instant like a translucent
curtain through which one catches a glimpse of a larger and more
beautiful reality. The specific hopes, fears, schemes, designs,
purposes of life, suddenly become an interlude and not an end.
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