Every root and weed which grows in every field; every dead leaf which
falls in the highwoods of many a parish, from the Grange and Woodmancote
round to Farleigh and Preston, and so to Brighton and the Alresford
downs;--ay, every atom of manure which the farmers put on the land--foul
enough then, but pure enough before it touches me--each of these, giving
off a tiny atom of what men call carbonic acid, melts a tiny grain of
chalk, and helps to send it down through the solid hill by one of the
million pores and veins which at once feed and burden my springs. Ages
on ages I have worked on thus, carrying the chalk into the sea. And ages
on ages, it may be, I shall work on yet; till I have done my work at
last, and levelled the high downs into a flat sea-shore, with beds of
flint gravel rattling in the shallow waves.
She might tell you that; and when she had told you, you would surely
think of the clumsy chalk-cart rumbling down the hill, and then of the
graceful stream, bearing silently its invisible load of chalk; and see
how much more delicate and beautiful, as well as vast and wonderful,
Madam How's work is than that of man.
But if you asked the nymph why she worked on for ever, she could not tell
you. For like the Nymphs of old, and the Hamadryads who lived, in trees,
and Undine, and the little Sea-maiden, she would have no soul; no reason;
no power to say why.
It is for you, who are a reasonable being, to guess why: or at least
listen to me if I guess for you, and say, perhaps--I can only say
perhaps--that chalk may be going to make layers of rich marl in the sea
between England and France; and those marl-beds may be upheaved and grow
into dry land, and be ploughed, and sowed, and reaped by a wiser race of
men, in a better-ordered world than this: or the chalk may have even a
nobler destiny before it.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133