pest is a quick and
enormous softness. What down, what sand, what deep moss, what elastic
wave could match the bed and cushion of the gale?

This storm tossed the wave and the stones of the sea-wall up together.
The next day it left the waters white with the thrilling whiteness of
foam in sunshine. It was only the Channel; and in such narrow waters you
do not see the distances, the wide levels of fleeting and floating foam,
that lie light between long wave and long wave on a Mediterranean coast,
regions of delicate and transitory brightness so far out that all the
waves, near and far, seem to be breaking at the same moment, one beyond
the other, and league beyond league, into foam. But the Channel has its
own strong, short curl that catches the rushing shingle up with the
freshest of all noises and runs up with sudden curves, white upon the
white sea-wall, under the random shadow of sea-gulls and the light of a
shining cloud.

THE DAFFODIL

To travel eastwards and breast the sun, to sail towards the watershed and
breast the floods, to go north and breast the winter--fresh and warm are
the energies of such bracing action; but more animating still is it to
live so as to breast the stress of time.

Man and woman may, like the child, or almost like him, fill the time and
enlarge the capacity of the day--our poor day that so easily shrinks and
dwindles in the careless possession of idle minds. The date, every first
of March, for example, may sweep upon a large curve and come home
annually after a swinging flight. To the infinite variety of natural
days may be entrusted half the work of strengthening the flight against
time, but the other half must be the task of the vehement heart. Nature
assuredly does not fail. Days, seasons, and years are as wide asunder as
the unforeseen can set them, and a crowd of children is not more various.
But the resisting heart seems of late to be somewhat lacking. We are
inclined to turn our heel upon the East, upon the watershed, upon the
gates of the wind, and to go the smooth road.

We are even precipitate, and whip our way faster on the time-killing
course than the natural event would take us. It is not enough that we
should run helplessly, we outstrip the breeze and outsail the current
with the ease of our untimely luxuries. Our daffodils are no longer to
have the praise of their daring, for we no longer relate them to the
lagging swallow. By the time the barely budd