of a verse. And in the old proverbs and homely sayings of the time he
found the good and beautiful English life, a time full of grace and
dignity and rich merriment. He dived deeper and deeper into his books; he
had taken all obsolescence to be his province; in his disgust at the
stupid usual questions, "Will it pay?" "What good is it?" and so forth,
he would only read what was uncouth and useless. The strange pomp and
symbolism of the Cabala, with its hint of more terrible things; the
Rosicrucian mysteries of Fludd, the enigmas of Vaughan, dreams of
alchemists--all these were his delight. Such were his companions, with
the hills and hanging woods, the brooks and lonely waterpools; books, the
thoughts of books, the stirrings of imagination, all fused into one
phantasy by the magic of the outland country. He held himself aloof from
the walls of the fort; he was content to see the heaped mounds, the
violent height with faerie bulwarks, from the gate in the lane, and to
leave all within the ring of oaks in the mystery of his boyhood's vision.
He professed to laugh at himself and at his fancies of that hot August
afternoon, when sleep came to him within the thicket, but in his heart of
hearts there was something that never faded--something that glowed like
the red glint of a gypsy's fire seen from afar across the hills and mists
of the night, and known to be burning in a wild land. Sometimes, when he
was sunken in his books, the flame of delight shot up, and showed him a
whole province and continent of his nature, all shining and aglow; and in
the midst of the exultation and triumph he would draw back, a little
afraid. He had become ascetic in his studious and melancholy isolation,
and the vision of such ecstasies frightened him. He began to write a
little; at first very tentatively and feebly, and then with more
confidence. He showed some of his verses to his father, who told him with
a sigh that he had once hoped to write--in the old days at Oxford, he
added.