though they have the shadow of the sun under their wings, they have the
light of the earth there also. The waves and the coast shine up to them,
and they fly between lights.

Black flocks and white they gather their delicate shadows up, "swift as
dreams," at the end of their flight into the clefts, platforms, and
ledges of harbourless rocks dominating the North Sea. They subside by
degrees, with lessening and shortening volleys of wings and cries until
there comes the general shadow of night wherewith the little shadows
close, complete.

The evening is the shadow of another flight. All the birds have traced
wild and innumerable paths across the mid-May earth; their shadows have
fled all day faster than her streams, and have overtaken all the movement
of her wingless creatures. But now it is the flight of the very earth
that carries her clasped shadow from the sun.




THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY


All Englishmen know the name of Lucy Hutchinson; and of her calling and
election to the most wifely of all wifehoods--that of a soldier's
wife--history has made her countrymen aware. Inasmuch as Colonel
Hutchinson was a political soldier, moreover, she is something more than
his biographer--his historian. And she convinces her reader that her
Puritan principles kept abreast of her affections. There is no
self-abandonment; she is not precipitate; keeps her own footing; wife of