One or two of these pleasant spectres I think I have laid. I used
one but the other day: a little eyot of dense, freshwater sand,
where I once waded deep in butterburrs, delighting to hear the song
of the river on both sides, and to tell myself that I was indeed
and at last upon an island. Two of my puppets lay there a summer's
day, hearkening to the shearers at work in riverside fields and to
the drums of the gray old garrison upon the neighbouring hill. And
this was, I think, done rightly: the place was rightly peopled -
and now belongs not to me but to my puppets - for a time at least.
In time, perhaps, the puppets will grow faint; the original memory
swim up instant as ever; and I shall once more lie in bed, and see
the little sandy isle in Allan Water as it is in nature, and the
child (that once was me) wading there in butterburrs; and wonder at
the instancy and virgin freshness of that memory; and be pricked
again, in season and out of season, by the desire to weave it into
art.
There is another isle in my collection, the memory of which
besieges me. I put a whole family there, in one of my tales; and
later on, threw upon its shores, and condemned to several days of
rain and shellfish on its tumbled boulders, the hero of another.
The ink is not yet faded; the sound of the sentences is still in my
mind's ear; and I am under a spell to write of that island again.
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