Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/249

to make the earth firm. It seemed to me a night when the ancient gods might be met with in the lonely places. But I saw nothing except some sly things back among the fir copses that may have been companies of goblins, if they weren’t merely shadows.

“(I wonder why goblin is such an enchanting word and gobbling such an ugly one. And why is shadowy suggestive of all beauty while umbrageous is so ugly?)

“But I heard all kinds of fairy sounds and each gave me an exquisite vanishing joy as I went up the hill. There is always something satisfying in climbing to the top of a hill. And that is a hill-top I love. When I reached it I stood still and let the loveliness of the evening flow through me like music. How the Wind Woman was singing in the bits of birchland around me—how she whistled in the serrated tops of the trees against the sky! One of the thirteen new silver moons of the year was hanging over the harbour. I stood there and thought of many, many beautiful things—of wild, free brooks running through starlit April fields—of rippled grey-satin seas—of the grace of an elm against the moonlight—of roots stirring and thrilling in the earth—owls laughing in darkness—a curl of foam on a long sandy shore—a young moon setting over a dark hill—the grey of gulf storms.

“I had only seventy-five cents in the world but Paradise isn’t bought with money.

“Then I sat down on an old boulder and tried to put those moments of delicate happiness into a poem. I caught the shape of them fairly well, I think—but not their soul. It escaped me.

“It was quite dark when I came back and the whole character of my Land of Uprightness seemed changed. It was eerie—almost sinister. I would have run if I could have dared. The trees, my old well-known friends, were strange and aloof. The sounds I heard were not the cheery, companionable sounds of daytime—nor the friendly, fairy sounds of the sunset—they were creeping