On this particular Sunday, there was no doubt but that the spring had
come at last. It was warm, with a latent shiver in the air that made
the warmth only the more welcome. The shallows of the stream glittered
and tinkled among bunches of primrose. Vagrant scents of the earth
arrested Archie by the way with moments of ethereal intoxication. The
grey Quakerish dale was still only awakened in places and patches from
the sobriety of its winter colouring; and he wondered at its beauty; an
essential beauty of the old earth it seemed to him, not resident in
particulars but breathing to him from the whole. He surprised himself
by a sudden impulse to write poetry - he did so sometimes, loose,
galloping octo-syllabics in the vein of Scott - and when he had taken
his place on a boulder, near some fairy falls and shaded by a whip of a
tree that was already radiant with new leaves, it still more surprised
him that he should have nothing to write. His heart perhaps beat in
time to some vast indwelling rhythm of the universe.
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