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A piny dell gave some vista of the broad sea we were leaving, and an opening in the woods displayed another blue sea-line before; the encountering breezes interchanged odor of berry-bush and scent of brine; penetrating farther among oaks and chestnuts, we came upon some little cottage, quaint and sheltered as any Spenser drew; it was built on no high-road, and turned its vine-clad gable away from even the footpath.
Soon the stream would be running by the great downs it was a river now, bearing boats upon it till it passed by the wharves and beneath the bridges of the little town, and out into the great sea-flat, meeting, with how strange a wonder, the upward-creeping briny tide, with its sharp savours and its wholesome smell; till it flowed at last by the docks, where the big steamers lay unlading, blowing their loud sea-horns, past weed-fringed piers and shingly beaches, until it was mingled with the moving deep, where the waves ran higher on the blue sea-line, and the great buoy rolled and dipped above the shoal.
But whatever the mood of our affections, so it is with us island wanderers: we cannot gaze over at England, knowing the old country to be close under the sea-line, and not hail it, and partly forget ourselves in the time that was.
Half the sky, from the zenith to the western sea-line, was an astonishing sheet of pure, pale, even gold. And through this sheen, on the horizon, burned the sun, a disc of richer gold. The gold of the sky grew more golden, then tarnished before our eyes and began to glow faintly with red. As the red deepened, a mist spread over the whole sheet of gold and the burning yellow sun.
There was a sandy space beyond the grounds, a long level of her father's land extending to the eastern cliffs, and considered barren by him, but rich with a certain beauty of its own, the beauty of open spaces which rest and relieve the mind; and of immensity in the shining sea-line beyond the cliffs, and the arching vault of the sky overhead dipping down to encircle the earth; and of colour for all moods, from the vividest green of grass and yellow of gorse to the amethyst ling, and the browns with which the waning year tipped every bush and bramble things which, when properly appreciated, make life worth living.
And then it was that first the deep-voiced sea Sang low to thee and me Its ancient secrets by the lonely shore; And we two watched the strange birds dip and soar Between the fading sea-line, far and dim, And the white dazzle of the sands' long rim.
For long, both North and South clung to the sea-line and to the lower stretches of rivers where the ships could come in. Only by degrees did English colonial life push back into the forests away from the sea, to the hills, and finally across the mountains. In the spring of 1689, Virginians flocked to Jamestown to hear William and Mary proclaimed Lord and Lady of Virginia.
She could not have borne, just then, to see any more; and feeling her heart too full she stood even there, with hands crossed upon her bosom, looking away from the roses to the distant sea-line. That said something very different. That was very sobering; if she had needed sobering, which she did not.
The rain-soaked clothes of us were sufficient for the time, but soon hunger came and added a physical pain to the torture of our doubt. Again and again we stood up on the reeling thwarts and looked wildly around the sea-line. No pinnace no ship nothing! Nothing, only sea and sky, and circling sea-birds that came to mock at our misery with their plaintive cries. A bitter night! A no less cruel day!
'From the shadow of this wall, I think, said I, as we emerged upon a road on which a wall abutted. 'It's gone! he returned, looking over his shoulder. 'And all ill go with it. Now for our dinner! But he looked again over his shoulder towards the sea-line glimmering afar off, and yet again.
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