



Transcribed from the 1899 John Lane edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





The Spirit of Place and Other Essays


Contents:

The Spirit of Place
Mrs. Dingley
Solitude
The Lady of the Lyrics
July
Wells
The Foot
Have Patience, Little Saint
The Ladies of the Idyll
A Derivation
A Counterchange
Rain
Letters of Marceline Valmore
The Hours of Sleep
The Horizon
Habits and Consciousness
Shadows




THE SPIRIT OF PLACE


With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets have
all but outsung the bells.  The inarticulate bell has found too much
interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible
utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue.  The bell, like the bird,
is a musician pestered with literature.

To the bell, moreover, men do actual violence.  You cannot shake together
a nightingale's notes, or strike or drive them into haste, nor can you
make a lark toll for you with intervals to suit your turn, whereas
wedding-bells are co