Summer in Skye

Excerpt from Summer in Skye

Moreover, one is tired and jaded. The whole man, body and soul, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune, and harsh, is fagged with work, eaten up of impatience, and haunted with visions of vacation. One babbles 0' green fields, like a very Fal staff; and the poor tired ears hum with sea-music like a couple of sea-shells. At last it comes, the Ist of August, and then - like an arrow from a Tartar's bow, like a bird from its cage, like a lover to his mistress - one is off; and before the wild scar lets of sunset die on the northern sea, one is in the silence of the hills, those eternal sun-dials that tell the hours to the shepherd, and in one's nostrils is the smell of peat-reek, and in one's throat the flavour of usquebaugh. Then come long floating summer days, so silent the wilderness, that one can hear one's heart beat; then come long silent nights, the waves heard upon the shore, although z'kaz' is a mile away, in which one snatches the fearful joy of a ghost story, told by shepherd or fisher, who believes in it as in his own existence. Then one beholds sunset, not through the smoked glass of towns, but gloriously through the clearness of en kindled air. Then one makes acquaintance with sunrise, which to the dweller in a city, who con forms to the usual proprieties, is about the rarest of this world's sights.

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