A Day from the Calendar This encounter has not been
the only notable event this week. I have had two experiences, both in one day, of that intensity which comes upon one's whole being like a minor apocalypse, bringing back again a suggestion of that mood of ecstasy by which youth lives and rides over all its trials and miseries. The first one was in the rain, soon after daybreak at the wayside station. I had just left my car near the coal shoots by the siding, when from a willow over-hanging the heaps of semi-slag, the first thrush began to shout his triple-turned notes, proclaiming the new year and the rites of spring. For a few moments the whole scene looked young, like a landscape by Poussin.
That same night I was home again. The wind had dropped, and the contrast after so many weeks of storm was startling. A rusty half- moon hung in the mist, and the silence over earth and sky was some- thing to be touched and seen. A hundred yards away my dog's nostrils sounded like an orchestra as he sniffed at something in the dark. I stood still, listening to my own blood coursing on its round. Then, from the church tower two and a half miles across the valley, on the opposite hill, the bell struck ten. The vibrations were launched on the silence like a boat into water, and I heard the waves of sound steadily expanding, in an ear-visible geometry, rippling over me and passing away.
Previous page
