ly and
slowly across the downs, the figure of a man.

He was powerful, full of health and easy; his clothes were rags; his
face was open and bronzed. I came at once off my horse to speak with
him, and, holding my horse by the bridle, I led it forward till we met.
Then I asked him whither he was going, and whether, as I knew these open
hills by heart, I could not help him on his way.

He answered me that he was in no need of help, for he was bound nowhere,
but that he had come up off the high road on to the hills in order to
get his pleasure and also to see what there was on the other side. He
said to me also, with evident enjoyment (and in the accent of a lettered
man), "This is indeed a day to be alive!"

I saw that I had here some chance of an adventure, since it is not every
day that one meets upon a lonely down a man of culture, in rags and
happy. I therefore took the bridle right off my horse and let him
nibble, and I sat down on the bank of the Roman road holding the
leather of the bridle in my hand, and wiping the bit with plucked grass.
The stranger sat down beside me, and drew from his pocket a piece of
bread and a large onion. We then talked of those things which should
chiefly occupy mankind: I mean, of happiness and of the destiny of the
soul. Upon these matters I found him to be exact, thoughtful, and just.

First, then, I said to him: "I also have been full of gladness all this
day, and, what is more, as I came up the hill from Waltham I was
inspired to verse, and wrote it inside my mind, completing a passage I
had been working at for two years, upon joy. But it was easy for me to
be happy, since I was on a horse and warm and well fed; yet even for me
such days are capricious. I have known but few in my life. They are each
of them distinct and clear, so rare are they, and (what is more) so
different are they in their very quality from all other days."

"You are right," he said, "in this last phrase of yours.... They are
indeed quite other from all the common days of our lives. But you were
wrong, I think, in saying that your horse and clothes and good feeding
and the rest had to do with these curious intervals of content. Wealth
makes the run of our days somewhat more easy, poverty makes them more
hard--or very hard. But no poverty has ever yet brought of itself
despair into the soul--the men who kill themselves are neither rich nor
poor. Still less has wealth ever purchased those peculiar hours. I als