With that we came out suddenly on the wide stretch of the sands,
which were black with the knobs and masses of our laughing and quite
desperate democracy. And the sunset, which was now in its final glory,
flung far over all of them a red flush and glitter like the gigantic
firelight of Dickens. In that strange evening light every figure
looked at once grotesque and attractive, as if he had a story to tell.
I heard a little girl (who was being throttled by another little girl)
say by way of self-vindication, "My sister-in-law 'as got four rings
aside her weddin' ring!"

I stood and listened for more, but my friend went away.


XIV

In Topsy-Turvy Land

Last week, in an idle metaphor, I took the tumbling of trees
and the secret energy of the wind as typical of the visible world
moving under the violence of the invisible. I took this metaphor
merely because I happened to be writing the article in a wood.
Nevertheless, now that I return to Fleet Street (which seems to me,
I confess, much better and more poetical than all the wild woods
in the world), I am strangely haunted by this accidental comparison.
The people's figures seem a forest and their soul a wind.
All the human personalities which speak or signal to me seem to have
this fantastic character of the fringe of the forest against the sky.
That man that talks to me, what is he but an articulate tree?
That driver of a van who waves his hands wildly at me to tell me
to get out of the way, what is he but a bunch of branches stirred