A Piece of Chalk - Page 2

cart-horses,
or the smoothness of the beech-tree; it declares in the teeth
of our timid and cruel theories that the mighty are merciful.
As my eye swept the landscape, the landscape was as kindly
as any of its cottages, but for power it was like an earthquake.
The villages in the immense valley were safe, one could see,
for centuries; yet the lifting of the whole land was like
the lifting of one enormous wave to wash them all away.

I crossed one swell of living turf after another, looking for a place
to sit down and draw. Do not, for heaven's sake, imagine I was going
to sketch from Nature. I was going to draw devils and seraphim,
and blind old gods that men worshipped before the dawn of right,
and saints in robes of angry crimson, and seas of strange green,
and all the sacred or monstrous symbols that look so well in bright
colours on brown paper. They are much better worth drawing than Nature;
also they are much easier to draw. When a cow came slouching
by in the field next to me, a mere artist might have drawn it;
but I always get wrong in the hind legs of quadrupeds. So I drew
the soul of the cow; which I saw there plainly walking before me
in the sunlight; and the soul was all purple and silver, and had
seven horns and the mystery that belongs to all the beasts. But
though I could not with a crayon get the best out of the landscape,
it does not follow that the landscape was not getting the best out
of me. And this, I think, is the mistake that people make about the
old poets who lived before Wordsworth, and were supposed not to care
very much about Nature because they did not describe it much.

They preferred writing about great men to writing about great hills;
but they sat on the great hills to write it. They gave out much
less about Nature, but they drank in, perhaps, much more. They
painted the white robes of their holy virgins with the blinding
snow, at which they had stared all day. They blazoned the shields
of their paladins with the purple and gold of many heraldic sunsets.
The greenness of a thousand green leaves clustered into the live
green figure of Robin Hood. The blueness of a score of forgotten
skies became the blue robes of the Virgin. The inspiration went
in like sunbeams and came out like Apollo.

. . . . .

But as I sat scrawling these silly figures on the brown paper, it began
to dawn on me, to my great disgust, that I had left one chalk, and that a
most exquisite and essential chalk, behind. I searched all my pockets,
but I could not find any white chalk. Now, those who are acquainted
with all the philosophy (nay, religion) which is typified in the art
of drawing on brown paper, know that white is positive and essential.
I cannot avoid remarking here