“‘I have visited London. I saw the city pillared, above the shadowy abyss of the river, on columns of light; and it was less than one of my dreams. It was Winter and I was resolved to work again in Poplar. I was crossing one of the bridges, full of purpose and thought, going against the tide of the crowd. The morning had a low yellow roof of fog. About the heads of the crowd swayed a few gulls, inter-lacing so that they could not be counted. They swayed like falling snow and screamed. They brought light on their long wings, as the ship below, setting out slowly with misty masts, brought light to the green and leaden river upon the foam at her bows. And ever about the determined, careless faces of the men swayed the pale wings, like wraiths of evil and good, calling and calling to ears that know not what they hear. And they tempted my brain with the temptation of their beauty: I went to and fro to hear and to see them until they slept and the crowd had flowed away. I rejoiced that day, for I thought that this beauty had made ready my brain, and that on the mountains at last I should behold the fulness and the simplicity of beauty. So I went away without seeing Poplar. But there, again, among the mountains was weariness, because I also was there.’” “Why is he always weary?” asked Mrs Morgan plaintively, before reading on: “But not always weariness. For have I not the company of planet and star in the heavens, the same as bent over prophet, poet, and philosopher of old? By day a scene unfolds as when the first man spread forth his eyes and saw more than his soul knew. These things lift up my heart sometimes for days together, so that the voices of fear and doubt are not so much in that infinite silence as rivulets in an unbounded plain. The sheer mountains, on some days, seem to be the creation of my own lean terrible thoughts, and I am glad: the soft, wooded hills below and behind seem the creation of the pampered luxurious thought which I have left in the world of many men.... “Would that I could speak in the style of the mountains. But language, except to genius and simple men, is but a paraphrase, dissipating and dissolving the forms of passion and thought.... “Again Time lured me back out of Eternity, and I believed that I longed to die as I lay and watched the sky at sunset inlaid with swart forest, and watched it with a dull eye and a cold heart....” “And they think he is an atheist. They think he has buried gold on the mountain,” exclaimed Mrs Morgan, indignantly. Little she guessed of the nights before her in the lone farmhouse with her bewildered son and the wild Angharad. While he raved through his last hours and Angharad spent herself in wailing, and Mrs Morgan tried to steady his thoughts, I could only walk about the hills. I climbed to the tower, but learnt nothing because Morgan or his wife had set fire to it on leaving, and the shell of stones only remained.