So soon as you have come to see That what the others call Realities, for such as you, Are never real at all; So soon as you have ceased to care What others say or do, And understand that they are they, And you--thank God--are you. Then is your foot upon the path, Your journey well begun, And safe the road for you to tread, Moonlight or morning sun. Pence of this world you shall not take, Yea! no provision heed; A wild-rose gathered in the wood Will buy you all you need. Hungry, the birds shall bring you food, The bees their honey bring; And, thirsty, you the crystal drink Of an immortal spring. For sleep, behold how deep and soft With moss the earth is spread, And all the trees of all the world Shall curtain round your bed. Enchanted journey! that begins Nowhere, and nowhere ends, Seeking an ever-changing goal, Nowhither winds and wends. For destination yonder flower, For business yonder bird; Aught better worth the travelling to I never saw or heard. O long dream-travel of the soul! First the green earth to tread-- And still yon other starry track To travel when you're dead_. CHAPTER IX DUTCH HOLLOW The day had opened with a restless picturesque morning of gusty sunshine and rolling clouds. There was something rich and stormy and ominous in the air, and a soft rainy sense of solemn impending change, at once brilliant and mournful; a curious sense of intermingled death and birth, as of withered leaves and dreaming seeds being blown about together on their errands of decay and resurrection by the same breath of the unseen creative spirit. Incidentally it meant a rain-storm by evening, and its mysterious presage had prompted Colin to the furnishing of our knapsacks with water-proof cloaks, which, as the afternoon wore on, seemed more and more a wise provision. But the rain still held off, contenting itself with threatening phantasmagoria of cloud, moulding and massing like visible thunder in our wake. It seemed leisurely certain, however, of catching us before nightfall; and, sure enough, as the light began to thicken, and we stood admiring its mountainous magnificence--vast billows of plum-coloured gloom, hanging like doomsday over a stretch of haunted orchard--the great drops began to patter down. Surely the sky is the greatest of all melodramatists. Nothing short of the cataclysmal end of the world could have provided drama to match the stupendous stage-setting of that stormy sky. All doom and destiny and wrath of avenging deities and days of judgment seemed concentrated in that frown of gigantic darkness. Beneath it the landscape seemed to grow livid as a corpse, and terror to fill with trembling the very trees and grasses. Oedipus and Orestes and King Lear rolled into one could hardly have accounted for that angry sky. Such a sky it must have been that carried doom to the cities of the plain. And, after all, it was only Colin and I innocently making haste to Dutch Hollow!