Edward Thomas

The white houses on the hill are whiter than ever before in the early light and the south wind from over the sea. The soft, wheat-coloured sand is inscribed far from the water by the black scrawl of the overpast storm. But now the sea is broken by sliding ripples so small that they seem only the last, discontented efforts of the wind to make the surface one perfect floor of glass. The curving, foamy lines waver and swirl and are about to disappear and leave the desired level when others are born unnoticeably. The black hulls of the leaning ships gleam and darken the water, and by their reflections give it an immeasurable depth which contrasts strangely with its lucid tranquillity and the drowned roses of the departing dawn, for in the high blue sky some of the sunrise clouds have lost their way and hang, still rosy, near the zenith, round the transparent moon. The mist over the sea at the horizon is golden.

Sea and shore are at rest, all but one group of men who are welcoming a little ship that comes in upon the tide, fragrant and stately and a little weary, as with folded arms, solemn also as if she were invading, or perhaps bringing mysterious gifts for the ancient, wintry land.

And now they are hauling in the deeply-laden boat that seems on this fair morning to have brought the spring out of the sea; and that is why they strain grimly to have her safe on the storm-strewn shore. She is laden with flowers, with anemones and primroses for the woods, violets for the banks, marigolds for the brooks and the ungrazed, rushy corners of long fields, daffodils for the stone walls and the short turf at the edges of copses, stitchwort for the hedgerows, bittersweet may for the hawthorns, gold for the willows, white and rosy blossom for the old orchards among the hills, mezereon, jonquils, rockets, plume poppies and snapdragons and roses for the gardens; and the men heave and groan as if they feared lest the sea should still rob them of some.

All the leaves are there—the sweet hawthorn green which the children chew, the dewy, pensile leaves of hazel and beech and lime, the palmy ash leaves still misty with purple flower, the oak leaves bronzed or gilded among their rosy galls, and the streamers of the willow, and all the grasses and reeds, and the tall young adder-headed bracken for the moor, and ferns for the dripping ledges of the waterfall; and the men heave without resting, lest any should escape and so cheat them of shaded ways for rest and sport and love.

There also are the birds—the gentle martins, swallows that will seem the perfect flower of the home sweetness in stern cottages on the heights and warm farmhouses in the valleys, the chiffchaffs that shall sing in the ash and the larch, the delicate wrens of the woodland crests and the tempestuous nightingales of the thick-budded copses, silent fly-catchers for the plum trees on southern walls, cuckoos to shout over the dim water-meadows and in the pearly lichened oak woods, ousels to flash on the moors, skiey swifts, doves to fill the green caverns of the beeches, and all the chatterers that hide in blackthorn and cornel thickets when it is best to walk among them; and the men heave, for they are coming to the land even now.

Very near now are the lizards of the drowsy nettle-beds, snakes to curl and uncurl upon the sunlit moss, and blue sylphs for the rivulets. All are coming in from this placid sea; and so the men heave, and the white houses begin to glitter, and the golden mist over the sea promises that days shall again be long, and men shall sit carelessly on gates and sleep under the hedge at noon and adventure and make plans in the pure mornings that are at hand.

CHAPTER XLII
FISHING BOATS

The tide moves the river northward, towards me, under the bridge on which I stand. On both sides it is lined for a little way by houses: on the east in a flat, straight front, on the west in irregular rocky masses. Those on the east are coldly stained with light from the western sky; those opposite are vaguely shadowed and have an airiness and gloom—not a light yet appearing—as of the other side of Lethe. The river is of noble breadth.

Against the eastern houses rise up the masses of seven fishing boats in a row, with only such movement as makes the shadow run into the brown and gold, or the gold and brown into the shadow of the sails slowly, like the unfolding of poppies: and under their sides the shadows are profound as if they trailed black velvet mantles that hid the water. For, away from the boats, the unrippled surface of the motionlessly gliding river is of that lugubrious silver that seems to be, not water, but some trick of light upon mere air, such as is seen above summer meadows in the heat.

And over all is bent a pale, soft, empurpled sky, and in it a crescent moon.

Up the river came two fishing boats, sleeping, their motion the only proof of the tide—no man visible on board—no voices—and their sails of a colour as if they had been steeped in the early hues of the now vanished sunset, and yet in their folds so dark that they seem to be bringing with them the night as a cargo from those cloudy black woods in the south. Beyond the large curve of those woods the shining horn of the river reaches the unseen sea. The spirit of the sea comes up on the broad silent water.

The two small, solemn boats still glide in sleep; the others dream at the quay.

Southward, the dark wood sends out the narcotic night as a gift over the land, sowing the seeds of it from the wings of the slow sea birds, from the two incoming boats, silently; and now they have fallen upon good soil in the seven boats on the quay, in the masses of houses, in the arches of the bridge and in the hearts of men, and all things drink oblivion. As I turn away there is a sound of shrill, passionless voices that may be the souls of the oblivious travelling to content somewhere in the rich purple night.

CHAPTER XLIII
CLOUDS OVER THE SEA

The high, partridge-coloured heathland rolls southward, with small ridges as of a sea broken by cross winds, or as if the heather and the hard gorse cushions had grown over ruins which time had not yet smoothed into the right curves of perfect death. A gentle wind changes the grass from silver to green, from green to silver, by depressing or lifting up the blades. In the dry heather and pallid herbage the wind sounds all the stops of despair. The note that each produces is faint, and the combination hardly louder than the sound that fancy makes among the tombs. Nevertheless, the enchantment of that little noise pours into the air and heart a sympathy with the thousand microscopic sorrows and uncertainties of the inanimate world—a feeling that is part of the melancholy importunately intruding on a day of early spring. The larks rise, linking earth and sky with their songs, and the stonechats are restless.

There are no trees. The only house is a little, white, thatched cottage among some shining dark boats, on the distant rosy shore.

The sea makes no sound. It changes with the sky so often and so subtly that its variations are to be described, if at all, in terms not of colour but of thought. All such moods as pass through the mind of a lonely man, during long hours in a place where the outside world does not disturb him and he lives on memory and pure reflection, are symbolised by those changes on the surface of the sea. Now it is one thing and now another; the growth is imperceptible and those moods that have passed are as hard to reconstruct as the links of a long, fluctuating reverie. For the most part it is grey, a grey full of meditation and discontent.

The heathland changes with the sea. Both take their thoughts and fancies from the sky. For this is a world of clouds; earth and sea are made by them what they are. They make the sea, and they make the little pools, blue, silver or grey, among the gorse. The clouds are always there; inhabiting a dome that is about fifty miles from the horizon up and down to the opposite horizon; and yet they are never the same.

Where do the clouds go?

The large white clouds, mountainous and of alabaster and with looks of everlastingness. I see them in the north at midday, making the hills seem level with the plain. I turn away my eyes and when next I look they are gone. They vanish like childish things. One day I made an appointment with another child to play marbles on the next morning; I never went; I forgot; I never saw the boy again, and I remember it now, for I never played marbles after that.

The high white halcyons of summer skies.

The distant, icy ranges of rounded pearl down which, in terrace after terrace, the sun walks like a king to the sea in May. As I watch they grow big like roses in the sun, and they change and vanish and reappear beneath the restless sculptor’s hand. If a man loves what is passing away, he loves then.

Those little dove-like clouds that for a moment stain the dusky clouds after an April storm—are they a metamorphosis of the Pleiades? They are gone like music; for sometimes the memory of them equals the reality and sometimes they are not to be recalled.

Those Elysian, white sierras in the east, which, at the end of a day of frowns and humours, stretch far away in still and lucid air, their bases lost in blue, making the world immense, as if it were to be thus for ever and the gods to walk again.

The cliffs that hold the moon imprisoned in their clefts and lure the mind to desire useless things.

The flocks that go down into the sea or behind the mountains, and thrill the heart with adventurousness and yet never move it to an adventure, but rather persuade us to care greatly for nothing except to muse and mesmerise ourselves with that old song—

“I did but see her passing by

And yet I love her till I die.”

The parcels of aerial gold which at sunset make one canopy as of a golden-foliaged tree planted over the world. The night does not believe that they were ever there.

Those caravans that go down the blue precipices of night intently; those dragons, lean and black, that prepare the dawn and ruin the morning star.

They change, they tarry, they travel far, they pass away, they dissolve, they cannot die. Up there, do they think, or do they watch, or do they simply act? and is it pleasant simply to act? Have all the sunsets and dawns and thunderstorms done nothing for them? I suppose that up there also nothing matters but eternity; that up there also they know nothing of eternity.

CHAPTER XLIV
THE MARSH

The sun has gone down. Except on one hand, the immense empty marshland expands to the sea, and where it mingles with the grey water would be uncertain, but for the clamour of the wading birds and the gleam, now and then, of a white wing. The low bent thorns, inland, now take on a strange humanity, as of men who have ventured out into the solitude and pitched their tents there and none has followed them; they are bent in alarmed and hurrying attitudes away from the sea, but cannot leave it. The sea rises steeply up like a vast ploughed field to an uncertain sky of the same hue. All that greyness takes hold upon the mind like autumn rain and lures it to we know not what desperate carelessness; and the siren, that sweet evil of the sea, chants such dissolving melodies as this:—

But at one hand lies the first house in the world, a little ark of grey stone, pierced by windows behind which a velvet darkness weaves a spell and by a gloomy doorway; knock there and at once you will be barricaded again against the annihilating sea and night. All about it a trim garden of white and gold and dying red sends up a thin tower of scent that stands bravely in the salt wind. A tower!—at such an hour, when the easements of all the senses are opened wide upon eternity, this perfume not only satisfies the desiring and aspiring sense, but, with all its unsearched, undiscovered powers, builds for us here upon the shore a specular tower and, more, a palace lovely and shadowy, where the mind roves slowly and at ease, saluting vaguely apprehended shapes, finding now long lost memories of men and things which time has locked against a thousand keys, and now bold hopes and unexpected consolations. Content herself lurks here and many a pleasant ghost that seems immortal because it has died many times, and they may be enjoyed, until suddenly the night wind, without mercy, overturns the tower and desolates the palace and leaves us forsaken. Yonder the lighthouse flashes. The ships go out with wings as of a moth that cannot leave its chrysalis behind. The church bells moan; the sea birds whimper and shriek, and the road that goes on so long as we can walk lengthens out along the marsh and up the hill.

CHAPTER XLV
ONE SAIL AT SEA

This is a simple world. On either hand the shore sweeps out in a long curve and ends in a perpendicular, ash-coloured cliff, carving the misty air as with a hatchet-stroke. The shore is of tawny, terraced sand, like hammered metal from the prints of the retreating waves; and here and there a group of wildly carved and tragic stones—unde homines nati, durum genus—such as must have been those stones from which Deucalion made the stony race of men to arise. Up over the sand, and among these stones the water slides in tracery like May blossom or silver mail. A little way out, the long wave lifts itself up laboriously into a shadowy cliff, nods proudly and crumbles, vain and swift, into a thousand sparks of foam. Far out the desolate, ridgy leagues vibrate and murmur with an unintelligible voice, not less intelligible than when one man says, “I believe,” or another man, “I love,” or another, “I am your friend.” Almost at the horizon a sharp white sail sways, invisibly controlled. In a minute it does not move; in half-an-hour it has moved. It fascinates and becomes the image of the watcher’s hopes, as when in some tranquil grief we wait, with faint curiosity and sad foretelling, to see how our plans will travel, smiling a little even when they stray or stop, because we have foretold it. Will the sail sink? Will it take wing into the sky? Will it go straight and far, and overcome and celebrate its success? But it only fades away, and presently another is there unasked, yet not surprising, and it also fades away, and the night has come, and still the sea speaks with tongues. In the moonlight one strange flower glistens, white as a campanula, like a sweet-pea in shape—the bleached thigh-bone of a rat—and we forget the rest.

CHAPTER XLVI
THE CASTLE OF CARBONEK

The castle stands high among vast, sharp-edged waves of sand at the edge of a cliff, and looks at the sea and a long, empty shore. At its feet a little river can be seen running in a narrow valley. A few miles off it rises in the red moorland, then it falls with many a cascade down ladders of crag, broadens among willows where long leaves are all horizontal in the wind, and here by the castle it has reached an elvish, merry old age already, as it moves clear over the brown stones and out among the rocks to the sea. Opposite the castle, across the river, the other side of the valley is clothed in dense and luminous oak wood. Where the river joins the sea both the castle hill and the wooded hill break away into a broken multitude of bristling rocks, and among their alleys and hidden corridors and halls the waves leap with the motion of a herd of ridgy cattle galloping through narrow gateways. Beyond, and away for ten miles, the high dark coast sweeps in a curve which the sea whitens by showing its teeth; and round the headland at the end the ships come and go at starry intervals. Landward, the country rises in long, steep, furzy curves, interrupted by sudden rocks, to the red moor and the autumn evening sky of towering, tumultuous and yet steady grey cloud.

The castle stands among pale sand and long plumy grasses. The sand is deep within the hollow and roofless circuit of the broken walls, through which, here and there, come glimpses of sea or sky disconnected from any fragment of the land, so that I seem to stand between the sea and sky. In the summer ivy-leaved toad-flax buds and harebells, most delicate flowers, whisper from the crevices. But nothing lives here now. The trunk of an old tree that once grew through the walls is now so much worn that what it was when it lived is not to be known. Not only is all human life gone from here, but even the signs of its decay are invisible. The noble masonry can suffer no more except at the hands of men; it is too low and too strong. It is a rude crag. Neither history nor legend speaks intelligently of it. It is but known that it was raised by hands, and each man that comes to it has to build it again out of his own life and blood, or it remains not far removed from nothing. The wayfarer starts at the sight of it, tries in vain, shuddering at the cliff and the desolate sea, to conceive a life lived by beings like himself in such a place. To have lived there men must have had fairy aids or the blood of witches or of gods in their veins.

Here might easily have been builded in a night that phantom palace and its illusive pomps, where the Corinthian Lycius dwelt with the phantasmal Lamia until a philosopher’s eye unbuilt it again.

Or on these sands might have stood Myratana and blind Tiriel before the beautiful palace, and cursed their sons.

Or up in the vanished high bowman’s window the king’s daughter sat and harped and sang:—

When the sun has set, and land and sea are dissolved in cold mist, all but a circle of pale sand and the castle fragment, it seems true that here, to the foot of the tower that is gone, came the king’s daughter and wept and sighed and made a great moan: “Ah! he mourns not who does not mourn for love.” And the good king came and asked her if she desired to wed, and she answered, “Alas, sir, yes. Ah! he mourns not who does not mourn for love.”

Here, away from earth and sea and sky, apart from men and time and any care, the melody and the picture are truer than before, suiting that melancholy wood, in which the heart, seeming to go back easily through unguessed deeps of time, makes all sorrows its own, airily, not without delight.

And there are others who abode here or abide here, as for example those timeless knights of no age or clime—Pelleas, Launcelot, Pellinore, Palomides, Galahad, whose armour no man pretends to show us, whom old men’s tongues and poets’ pens have lured into immortality—to whom this castle gives a home.

When Launcelot had come to the water of Morteise, says Malory, he slept, and there in a vision he was bidden to rise and put on his armour and enter the first ship that he found. And he did so, and the ship moved without sail or oar, and in the ship was great sweetness so that “he was fulfilled with all things that he thought on or desired.” There he slept, and when he awoke there was none on board except the dead sister of Sir Percivale; and the ship went on for more than a month and Sir Launcelot fed on manna, until at last he touched land and there met Sir Galahad, his son. For half a year the two sailed together, and “often they arrived in isles far from folk, where there repaired none but wild beasts.” But one day at the edge of a forest a white knight warned Sir Galahad that he should stay with his father no more. “And therewith Galahad entered into the forest. And the wind arose, and drove Launcelot more than a month throughout the sea, where he slept but little, but prayed to God that he might see some tidings of the Sangreal. So it befell on a night, at midnight, he arrived afore a castle, on the back side, which was rich and fair, and there was a postern opened towards the sea, and was open without any keeping, save two lions kept the entry; and the moon shone clear. Anon Sir Launcelot heard a voice that said: Launcelot, go out of this ship and enter into the castle, where thou shalt see a great part of thy desire. Then he ran to his arms, and so armed him, and so went to the gate and saw the lions. Then set he hand to his sword and drew it. Then there came a dwarf suddenly, and smote him on the arm so sore that the sword fell out of his hand. Then heard he a voice say: O man of evil faith and poor belief, wherefore trowest thou more on thy harness than in thy Maker, for He might more avail thee than thine armour, in whose service thou art set. Then said Launcelot: Fair Father Jesu Christ, I thank Thee of Thy great mercy that Thou reprovest me of my misdeed; now see I well that ye hold me for your servant. Then took he again his sword and put it up in his sheath, and made a cross in his forehead, and came to the lions, and they made semblaunt to do him harm. Notwithstanding he passed by them without hurt, and entered into the castle to the chief fortress, and there were they all at rest. Then Launcelot entered in so armed, for he found no gate nor door but it was open. And at the last he found a chamber whereof the door was shut, and he set his hand thereto to have opened it, but he might not.

“Then he enforced him mickle to undo the door. Then he listened and heard a voice which sung so sweetly that it seemed none earthly thing; and him thought the voice said: Joy and honour be to the Father of Heaven. Then Launcelot kneeled down before the chamber, for well wist he that there was the Sangreal within that chamber. Then said he: Fair sweet Father, Jesu Christ, if ever I did thing that pleased Thee, Lord, for Thy pity ne have me not in despite for my foul sins done aforetime, and that Thou show me something of that I seek. And with that he saw the chamber door open, and there came out a great clearness, that the house was as bright as all the torches of the world had been there. So came he to the chamber door and would have entered. And anon a voice said to him: Flee, Launcelot, and enter not, for thou oughtest not to do it; and if thou enter thou shalt forthink it. Then he withdrew him aback right heavy. Then looked he up in the middle of the chamber, and saw a table of silver, and the Holy Vessel, covered with red samite and many angels about it, whereof one held a candle of wax burning, and the other held a cross and the ornaments of an altar. And before the Holy Vessel he saw a good man clothed as a priest. And it seemed that he was at the sacring of the mass. And it seemed to Launcelot that above the priest’s hands were three men, whereof the two put the youngest by likeness between the priest’s hands; and so he lift it up right high, and it seemed to show so to the people. And then Launcelot marvelled not a little, for him thought the priest was so greatly charged of the figure that him seemed that he should fall to the earth. And when he saw none about him that would help him, then came he to the door a great pace, and said: Fair Father Jesu Christ, ne take it for no sin though I help the good man which hath great need of help. Right so entered he into the chamber, and came toward the table of silver; and when he came nigh he felt a breath, that him thought it was intermeddled with fire, which smote him so sore in the visage that him thought it brent his visage; and therewith he fell to the earth and had no power to arise; so he was so araged, that had lost the power of his body, and his hearing, and his seeing. Then felt he many hands about him, which took him up and bare him out of the chamber door, without any amending of his swoon, and left him there, seeming dead to all people. So upon the morrow when it was fair day they within were arisen, and found Launcelot lying afore the chamber door. All they marvelled how that he came in, and so they looked upon him, and felt his pulse to wit whether there were any life in him; and so they found life in him, but he might not stand nor stir no member that he had. And so they took him by every part of the body, and bare him into a chamber, and laid him in a rich bed, far from all folk; and so he lay four days. Then the one said he was alive, and the other said, nay. In the name of God, said an old man, for I do you verily to wit he is not dead, but he is so full of life as the mightiest of you all; and therefore I counsel you that he be well kept till God send him life again.

“In such manner they kept Launcelot four-and-twenty days and all so many nights, that ever he lay still as a dead man; and at the twenty-fifth day befell him after midday that he opened his eyes, and when he saw folk he made great sorrow, and said: Why have ye awaked me, for I was more at ease than I am now. O Jesu Christ, who might be so blessed that might see openly thy great marvels of secretness there where no sinner may be! What have ye seen? said they about him. I have seen, said he, so great marvels that no tongue may tell, and more than any heart can think, and had not my son been here afore me I had seen much more. Then they told him how he had lain there four-and-twenty days and nights. Then him thought it was punishment for the four-and-twenty years that he had been a sinner, wherefore our Lord put him in penance four-and-twenty days and nights. Then looked Sir Launcelot afore him, and saw the hair which he had borne nigh a year, for that he forthought him right much that he had broken his promise unto the hermit, which he had avowed to do. Then they asked how it stood with him. Forsooth, said he, I am whole of body, thanked be our Lord; therefore, sirs, for God’s love tell me where I am. Then said they all that he was in the Castle of Carbonek.”

And when the moon is clear, and the tingling sea is vast and alone, this castle on the sand above the grim coast is Carbonek, meet for all adventures and all dreams.