There was no wind. Down in the hollow where I lay I was as sheltered as I should have been in bed. The night was washed through with the soft sound of the waves as they splashed in a long curving line on the flat strand that stretched on round to Dundrum, three miles away. Moths hovered above me with a beating of pale delicate wings; and all around, like a vast background for the sound of the sea, was the deep, rich, summer silence of the slumbering world, a silence of unending music, as though the great, living earth were breathing softly in its sleep. I lay on my back, and above me was the vast, deep vault of the sky, full of a floating darkness, in which the white moon hovered like a ghost. And I lay there in luxurious enjoyment of the night, and of the life that was running through my own body. It seemed to me at that moment as if my spirit were no longer merely passively receptive of what was borne in upon it, but that it had actually taken wing, had grown lighter, more volatile, were flowing out through the surrounding atmosphere, through the sky and the sea, were moving with the movement of the water. The earth beneath me was living and breathing, and, obedient to some obscure prompting of my body, I turned round and pressed my mouth against the dry grass, closer and closer, in a long silent embrace. It was very well there was no one to observe this exhibition of primitive and eternal instinct. I felt a passionate happiness and excitement. My head was bare, the salt sharp smell of the sea seemed to have set all my nerves tingling, and I unfastened my shirt that my breast might be bare also. All the past had slipped from me, and I lived in this moment, squeezing out its ecstasy to the last drop, as I might the juice of some ripe fruit. It seemed to me that I was on the brink of finding something for which all my previous existence had been but one long preparation and search. I was fumbling at the door of an enchanted garden: in a moment it would swing open: already the perfume of unknown flowers and fruits was in my nostrils. My feeling was deep and pure and clear as a forest pool. In my mind I went over the story of Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis.” I thought of the shepherd-boy Endymion. I imagined myself Endymion, as I lay there half naked in the moonlight. My eyes dimmed and the blood raced through my veins; it was as if the heart of the summer had suddenly opened out, like a gorgeous flower, and brought me some strange rapture.... * * * * *