While Mark was walking back to Wych and when on the brow of the first
rise of the road he stood looking down at Wychford in the valley below,
a chill lisping wind from the east made him shiver and he thought of the
lines in Keats' _Eve of St. Mark_:
_The chilly sunset faintly told_
_Of unmatured green vallies cold,_
_Of the green thorny bloomless hedge,_
_Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge,_
_Of primroses by shelter'd rills,_
_And daisies on the aguish hills._
The sky in the west was an unmatured green valley tonight, where Venus
bloomed like a solitary primrose; and on the dark hills of Heaven the
stars were like daisies. He turned his back on the little town and set
off up the hill again, while the wind slipped through the hedge beside
him in and out of the blackthorn boughs, lisping, whispering, snuffling,
sniffing, like a small inquisitive animal. He thought of Monica,
Margaret, and Pauline playing in their warm, candle-lit room behind him,
and he thought of Miriam reading in her tall-back chair before dinner,
for Evensong would be over by now. Yes, Evensong would be over, he
remembered penitently, and he ought to have gone this evening, which was
the vigil of St. Mark and of his birthday.
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