solitude of the blue water, never between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape
Horn, never between the Islands and the West, has the seaman seen
anything but a little circle of sea. The Ancient Mariner, when he was
alone, did but drift through a thousand narrow solitudes. The sailor has
nothing but his mast, indeed. And but for his mast he would be isolated
in as small a world as that of a traveller through the plains.

Round the plains the horizon lies with folded wings. It keeps them so
perpetually for man, and opens them only for the bird, replying to flight
with flight.

A close circlet of waves is the sailor's famous offing. His offing
hardly deserves the name of horizon. To hear him you might think
something of his offing, but you do not so when you sit down in the
centre of it.

As the upspringing of all things at your going up the heights, so steady,
so swift, is the subsidence at your descent. The further sea lies away,
hill folds down behind hill. The whole upstanding world, with its looks
serene and alert, its distant replies, its signals of many miles, its
signs and communications of light, gathers down and pauses. This flock
of birds which is the mobile landscape wheels and goes to earth. The
Cardinal weighs down the audience with his downward hands. Farewell to
the most delicate horizon.




HABITS AND CONSCIOUSNESS