Page:Twilight Hours (1868).djvu/23

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MEMOIR.
xix


us have two or three titles and characters to match. At home and with my friends I have always been Sadie, so self-named, they say, before I could speak plain. Sarah is my grim, business signature, which at first used to make me feel as if I had been starched. Miss Williams belongs to me, as never having had a sister, nor, for that matter, a brother."

She looks out on sea and sky, and notes how they have impressed her. The poet's mind can find sustenance even on the sands of Ramsgate : —

" The weather is celestial, a lazy sea, a smiling sky, with little wisps of white mist floating about like the ghosts of pleasant dreams." ***** " Yesterday I saw the sunset over the fields ; there was such a curious bright peacefulness over everything, the cool clear grey and blue of the sky, joined to the low green hills by a crimson line, where the sun had flung back a parting resurgam before he sank. " ***** "In this delicious weather one must keep out all day; this afternoon the sunset colours on the sea were exquisite, and the sky scenery magnificent — little gem-like bits of darkest blue set in snowy curled cumuli and lead-grey nimbus. Of course it is utterly impossible to describe this sort of thing ; but I suppose one's instinct of speech is ineradicable. Talking of instincts, I fancy the desire for some kind of audience or public is one almost universal. The few children there are on the sands now, play among themselves prosaically enough ; but a grown-up person has only to sit down amongst them, looking tolerably good- tempered, and may at once enliven them into attempting wonderful feats, casting up droll little glances in search of a smile of appro-