I say my memory paints it again for me; but it is only a memory, a shadow that my mind sees; and how can I describe to you a shadow?
When words are but phantoms themselves, how can I use them to set forth a phantom?
Whenever the grandeur of the cliffs had wearied me, as one grows weary sometimes of too long and too close a study of what is great, there was a little, enclosed, quiet graveyard that lay in the very lap of the island, where I could go for rest.

It was a small patch of ground, a God's acre, shut in on every side by high hedge-rows, which hid every view from sight except that of the heavens brooding over it.

Nothing was to be seen but the long mossy mounds above the dead, and the great, warm, sunny dome rising above them.

Even the church was not there, for it was built in another spot, and had a few graves of its own scattered about it.
I was sitting there one evening in the early spring, after the sun had dipped below the line of the high hedge-row, though it was still shining in level rays through it.

No sound had disturbed the deep silence for a long time, except the twittering of birds among the branches; for up here even the sea could not be heard when it was calm.