V.--On The Cliff

But still love is a power! Love can move mountains, for is not love the same as faith? And not a mountain is here, but a mere man's heart--already "moved," for he has loved her.

It is summer again. She sits on the cliff, leaning back on the short dry grass--if one still can call it grass, so "deep was done the work of the summer sun." And there near by is the rock, baked dry as the grass, and flat as an anvil's face. "No iron like that!" Not a weed nor a shell: "death's altar by the lone shore." The drear analogies succeed one another; she sees them everywhere, in everything. The dead grass, the dead rock. . . . But now, what is this on the turf? A gay blue cricket! A cricket--only that? Nay, a war-horse, a magic little steed, a "real fairy, with wings all right." And there too on the rock, like a drop of fire, that gorgeous-coloured butterfly.

"No turf, no rock: in their ugly stead, See, wonderful blue and red!"

Shall there not then be other analogies? May not the minds of men, though burnt and bare as the turf and the rock, be changed like them, transfigured like them:

"With such a blue-and-red grace, not theirs-- Love settling unawares!"

It was almost a miracle, was it not? the way they changed. Such miracles happen every day.