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The Spirit of Place and Other Essays
The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Spirit of Place, by Alice Meynell
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Title: The Spirit of Place
Author: Alice Meynell
Release Date: March 15, 2005 [eBook #1309]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPIRIT OF PLACE***
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 compelled to seem gay by mere movement and hustling. I have known some grim bells, with not a single joyous note in the whole peal, so forced to hurry for a human festiv