Dull orange bracken clings to the peat-like soil that seeps
into muddy moors past Devon. A shadowy fog makes
a royal landing on the low-slung ridge, spewing
fists of mist fit for scalers of Lakeland mountains,
balancing on the knife edge of Helvellyn before dawn.
I follow the droppings-dappled sheep trails, veering away
from the road. A ***** white flock nuzzles the close-cropped
scrubland for shoots of greenery, but masticates only humid air.
In the dim light of evening, a dark presence looms on the uneven
horizon: a distinct world fitfully revealed and obscured, liberated from,
then confined to the clinging veil of illusion that clutches the Earth.
This is no pilgrimage into the noirish heart of nature, yet
I detect through the flattened corona of the monarch moon
outlines of a troupe of Shakespearean ghosts tottering my way.
Revealed and obscured, like questions in Hamlet's tragedy,
they would gladly chant as a Greek chorus, if only they had
material voices to be heard. Together, they mime the news
of Elizabethan England: betrayal and intrigue, executions
and ***. The lust for power pours the foundation of the
City of Man -- sin and ambition, deception and pride. I hear
nothing but the constant scuff of my boots against wet stone.
Silence wraps round me like a cloak of quicksand. I must try
to scrape it clean. But with each new blade stroke, no novel
message emerges, no sign points homeward. Emptiness reigns
like a ruthless queen, ****** and shorn, an otherworldly white.
Looking back, I search for Coleridge strolling atop the Quantock Hills.
He has coaxed the Wordsworths there, convincing them to barter
isolation for inspiration. Poetry speaks to William, demanding
a new voice, a new style that joins the bright heart of nature to the brooding spirit of man, that lifts the lowly moments of the mundane
into the celestial heights of the Poet's magisterial meditations on Being.
All this once would have sufficed for me, but the stale, soaked smell
of sheep reminds me that I remain alone. Night falls and the moors
glisten from the constant damp. No one comes to England for its weather or cuisine. No one comes for solace or comfort or love. History,
literature,
haute couture, base passions: Such is the recipe for a signal
significance,
for a British extravagance of soul. It abides in the blackened bowels of Exmoor, launched from fallow footpaths and sodden goat trails,
skillfully trammeled by ghosts who juggle in silence the lavish jewels
of Elizabeth's crown, sparkling in the saturating mists before dawn.
