It is eleven o'clock, and with the mounting sun the silence has
become complete save when it is broken by the heavy, quick flap of
the wood-pigeon or the remonstrance of a surprised magpie. Service
is just beginning all over England in churches and the chapels
belonging to a hundred sects. In the village two miles away the
Salvation Army drum is beating, but it cannot penetrate these
recesses. Stay! a faint vibration from it comes over the hill, but
now it has gone. A fox, unaware of any human being, walks from one
side of the lane to the other, stopping in the middle. There is a
breath of wind and the low solemn song begins again above me.



UNDER BEACHY HEAD: DECEMBER



At the top of the hill the north-westerly wind blows fresh, but here
under the cliffs the sun strikes warm as in June. There is not a
cloud in the sky, and behind me broken, chalk pinnacles intensely
white rise into the clear blue, which is bluer by their contrast.
In front lies the calm, light-sapphire ocean with a glittering sun-
path on it broadening towards the horizon. All recollection of bare
trees and dead leaves has gone. The tide is drawing down and has
left bare a wide expanse of smooth untrodden sand through which
ridges run of chalk rock black with weed. The sand is furrowed by
little rivulets from the abandoned pools above, and at its edge long
low waves ripple over it, flattening themselves out in thin sheets
which invade one another with infinitely complex, graceful curves.