The Silent Isle eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 353 pages of information about The Silent Isle.

The Silent Isle eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 353 pages of information about The Silent Isle.

But as we journey through the world, as we become aware of the meanness and selfishness of men, as we learn to fight for our own hand, the high vision is apt to fade.  Who then can be more sad than the man who has felt in the depths of his soul the thrill of that opening light, and the further that he journeys, finds more and more weary persons who tell him insistently that it was nothing but a foolish incident of youth, a trick of fancy, a passing mood, and that life must be given to harder and more sordid things?  It is well for him if he can resist these ugly voices; if he can continue to discern what there is of generous and pure in the hearts of those about him, if he can persevere in believing that life does hold a holy and sweet mystery, and that it is not a mere dreary struggle for a little comfort, a little respect, a little pleasure by the way.  It is upon a man’s power of holding fast to undimmed beauty that his inner hopefulness, his power of inspiring others, depends.  But though it is sad to see some artist who has tasted of the morning dew, and whose heart has been filled with rapture, trading and trafficking, in conventional expression and laborious seriousness, with the memories of those bright visions, it is sadder far to see a man turn his back cynically upon the first hope, and declare his conviction that he has found the unreality of it all.  The artist must pray daily that his view may not grow clouded and soiled; and he must be ready, too, if he finds the voice grow faint, to lay his outworn music by, though he does it in utter sadness of soul, only glad if he can continue sorrowful.

XVI

I have been thinking all to-day, for no particular reason that I can discover, of a house where I spent many of the happiest days of my life.  It belonged for some years to an old friend of mine a bachelor, a professional man, who used to go there for his holidays, and delighted to gather round him a few familiar friends.  Year after year I used to go there, sometimes twice in the year, for long periods together.  The house was in North Wales:  it stood somewhat above the plain on a terrace among woods, at the base of a long line of dark crags, which showed their scarped fronts, with worn fantastic outlines, above the trees that clustered at their feet and straggled high up among the shoots of stone.  The view from the house was of extraordinary beauty.  There was a flat rich plain below, dotted with clumps of trees; a mountain rose at one side, a rocky ridge.  Through the plain a slow river broadened to the sea, and at the mouth stood a little town, the smoke of which went up peacefully on still days.  Across the sea, shadowy headlands of remote bays stood out one after another to the south.  The house had a few sloping fields below it; a lawn embowered in trees, and a pretty old walled garden, where the sun-warmed air was redolent with the homely scent of old-fashioned herbs and flowers.  Several little steep paths meandered through the wood, crossing and recrossing tiny leaping streams, and came out on a great tract of tumbled moorland above, with huge broad-backed mountains couched about it.

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The Silent Isle from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.