The magic word is not for me:
The vision fades, and far and near
The west wind stirs the grassy sea
In whispers to the watching ear.



AXMOUTH



A true Devonshire village, sloping upwards from the Axe. The
cottages are thatched, and the walls are of cobbles, plastered. A
little gurgling stream runs down the village street, and over the
stream each cottage on its bank has a little bridge. The poor brook
is much troubled, unhappily, by cabbage leaves and the like
defilement, and does its best to oversweep them and carry them away,
but does not quite succeed. In a few minutes, however, it will be
in the Axe, and in half an hour it will be in the pure sea. A
farmhouse stands at the end of the village with a farmyard of deep
manure and black puddles coming up to the side-door. The church,
once interesting, has been restored with more than usual barbarity,
blue slates, villa ridge-tiles, the vulgarest cheap pavement, tawdry
decorations and furniture, such as are supplied to churchwardens by
ecclesiastical tradesmen. But the tower is still grey, and has
looked unchanged over the Axe estuary for hundreds of years.
Turning up from the main street is a Devonshire lane eight feet wide
or thereabouts. It ascends to a farm on the hillside, and its steep
high banks are covered with ferns and primroses. A tiny brooklet
twitters down by its side. At the top of the down is a line of old