streak of open sea? Be greeted, O lands, which perchance I shall never see!
Ah, I have beheld blue and fiery seas and pliant beeches and palm-trees bending over azure waves; but these grey and cold lochs fairly bewitched me; look, yonder a crane is wading among the seaweed, and a gull or a sea-swallow is gliding over the waves with a wild and piercing cry; above the moorland a snipe is whistling and a flock of fieldfares are snorting, a shaggy little steer gazes at man, and on the bald hills the sheep are grazing, similar, from afar, to yellowish lice; and at evening myriads of tiny flies swarm forth and crawl into man’s nose, while the northern day lasts till nearly midnight.
And the livid, plashing sea beneath one’s feet, and the open road to the north. . . .
122
