CHAPTER VII
"I saw the peaceful main,
One molten mirror, one illumined plain,
Clear as the blue, sublime, o'erarching sky.
*****
A breeze sprang up, and with careering wing
Play'd like an unseen being on the water.
Slowly from slumber woke th' unwilling main,
Curling and murmuring, till the infant waves
Leap'd on his lap, and laugh'd in air and sunshine."
A TRIP TO DURDLE-DOOR.
It was a sweet morning in July, when, intent on a trip down the Bay, we put the dredges on board the boat and made sail. A nice little air from the westward bellied out the red canvass, and we bowled away right before it. The craft in the harbour disappeared; the houses bordering the wide-spread esplanade, grew dimmer and dimmer behind us, till they were no longer distinguishable, and a slender line alone showed where they stood. This line at length faded into the general blue distant haze, that just said a belt of land was there, and that was all.
So memory of past events, as, on the rapid wings of time, we are ever borne farther and farther from them, towards the ocean of eternity, grows dim behind us. How much more faint I find the remembrance in detail of my summer at Ilfracombe, than it was a few
