Pagan Papers | Page 2

from under her sun-bonnet -- so may
some girl-ancestress of hers have watched with beating heart the
Wessex levies hurry along to clash with the heathen and break them on
the down where the ash trees grew. And yonder, where the road swings
round under gloomy overgrowth of drooping boughs -- is that gleam of
water or glitter of lurking spears?
Some sing you pastorals, fluting low in the hot sun between dusty
hedges overlooked by contented cows; past farmsteads where man and
beast, living in frank fellowship, learn pleasant and serviceable lessons
each of the other; over the full-fed river, lipping the meadow-sweet,
and thence on either side through leagues of hay. Or through bending
corn they chant the mystical wonderful song of the reaper when the
harvest is white to the sickle. But most of them, avoiding classification,
keep each his several tender significance; as with one I know, not so far

from town, which woos you from the valley by gentle ascent between
nut-laden hedges, and ever by some touch of keen fragrance in the air,
by some mystery of added softness under foot -- ever a promise of
something to come, unguessed, delighting. Till suddenly you are
among the pines, their keen scent strikes you through and through, their
needles carpet the ground, and in their swaying tops moans the
unappeasable wind -- sad, ceaseless, as the cry of a warped humanity.
Some paces more, and the promise is fulfilled, the hints and
whisperings become fruition: the ground breaks steeply away, and you
look over a great inland sea of fields, homesteads, rolling woodland,
and -- bounding all, blent with the horizon, a greyness, a gleam -- the
English Channel. A road of promises, of hinted surprises, following
each other with the inevitable sequence in a melody.
But we are now in another and stricter sense an island of chemins qui
cheminent: dominated, indeed, by them. By these the traveller,
veritably se guindans, may reach his destination ``sans se poiner ou se
fatiguer'' (with large qualifications); but sans very much else whereof
he were none the worse. The gain seems so obvious that you forget to
miss all that lay between the springing stride of the early start and the
pleasant weariness of the end approached, when the limbs lag a little as
the lights of your destination begin to glimmer through the dusk. All
that lay between! ``A Day's Ride a Life's Romance'' was the excellent
title of an unsuccessful book; and indeed the journey should march
with the day, beginning and ending with its sun, to be the complete
thing, the golden round, required of it. This makes that mind and body
fare together, hand in hand, sharing the hope, the action, the fruition;
finding equal sweetness in the languor of aching limbs at eve and in the
first god-like intoxication of motion with braced muscle in the sun. For
walk or ride take the mind over greater distances than a throbbing whirl
with stiffening joints and cramped limbs through a dozen counties.
Surely you seem to cover vaster spaces with Lavengro, footing it with
gipsies or driving his tinker's cart across lonely commons, than with
many a globe-trotter or steam-yachtsman with diary or log? And even
that dividing line -- strictly marked and rarely overstepped -- between
the man who bicycles and the man who walks, is less due to a prudent
regard for personal safety of the one part than to an essential difference
in minds.

There is a certain supernal, a deific, state of mind which may indeed be
experienced in a minor degree, by any one, in the siesta part of a
Turkish bath. But this particular golden glow of the faculties is only felt
at its fulness after severe and prolonged exertion in the open air. ``A
man ought to be seen by the gods,'' says Marcus Aurelius, ``neither
dissatisfied with anything, nor complaining.'' Though this does not
sound at first hearing an excessive demand to make of humanity, yet
the gods, I fancy, look long and often for such a sight in these unblest
days of hurry. If ever seen at all, 'tis when after many a mile in sun and
wind -- maybe rain -- you reach at last, with the folding star, your
destined rustic inn. There, in its homely, comfortable strangeness, after
unnumbered chops with country ale, the hard facts of life begin to
swim in a golden mist. You are isled from accustomed cares and
worries -- you are set in a peculiar nook of rest. Then old failures seem
partial successes, then old loves come back in their fairest form, but
this time with never a shadow of regret, then old jokes renew their
youth and flavour. You ask nothing of the gods above, nothing