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Untitled Article
je&ty of mist : these were books , and poetry ,- and history , and prophecy , and association to me ; a world of associations , which they generated by their own inherent power . The only artificial things in which I delighted , and they were to me as if they were natural , and God had made them too , were the shins . Ships cannot anywhere else be what they are at Sandown . They come
suddenly , in their full proportions , from behind one point of the bay , and they depart as suddenly behind the other ; or , steering straight away from the island , their white sails diminish in the distance until they dissolve in the visible infinity . One of my first strong sensations was produced by the unexpected presence of one of these creatures of the elements . I had a pen in my hand , and I sketched it at the moment .
f A ship ! a ship I Thanks to the broad window , I can watch her from my sofa . She steers full for the centre of the bay * I should not wonder if this very house be her landmark . What a rate she comes on at ! pelting away— " snoring through the water /' as Allan Cunningham says in his Paul Jones . I verily believe I
can hear her , though she must be two miles off—at least she was then ; but she drives in faster than I can write , —how she grows ! one ' s eyeball swells to keep pace with her . She runs up in height like Jack and the bean-stalk , and spreads in width like an army wheeling out of columft ^ inia line . Shell be a-ground surely—* no , no , trust her for that—there ' s a beautiful tack ! how gracefully she swung about ! just the sweep of Catalani ' s curtsey . rfow you have her in profile—instead of a mountain mass of
canvass , you catch the curve of every sail , and see every mast bending before the breeze . What a length ! and what lightness with that length ! and what power with that lightness ! Away she goes , springing , bounding , darting along , an ocean race-horse , and Culver cliff the goal . I'll bet on her against Time with his best pair of wings on . No—what cares she for Culver Cliff ! gone off , at an angle , into the wide sea yonder . If she ' s steering for anything , it must be fof infinite space— -there ' s nothing else there . I'll just go watch her Into invisibility /
Ships were the only visitants I could tolerate , for they sought no communication with me , and , like the wind which impelled them , I could neither tell whence they came , nor whither they went . Even they perhaps excited me rather too much . Their forms took possession of my diseased fancy , and any semblance of outline was sufficient to give a sort of preternatural vitality to the cliffs which were sleeping in their calm and quiet whiteness . I also wrote down a sensation of this kind , half dream , half mad * -
ness but not the less true , as a memorial of that communion between the mind and the scenery which was gradually to assume a sounder character . You know th £ form of this bay- —a noble semicircle of several miles ; one extremity of which is formed by the white and lofty
Untitled Article
974 Sundown Bay *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1832, page 274, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/58/
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