Nor are the trees in this
antique landscape the trees so long intimate with Corot's south-west
wind, so often entangled with his uncertain twilights. They are as quiet
as the cloud, and such as the long and wild breezes of Romance have never
shaken or enlaced.
Upon all our islands this south-west wind is the sea wind. But elsewhere
there are sea winds that are not from the south-west. They, too, none
the less, are conquerors. They, too, are always strong, compelling winds
that take possession of the light, the shadow, the sun, moon, and stars,
and constrain them all alike to feel the sea. Not a field, not a
hillside, on a sea-wind day, but shines with some soft sea-lights. The
moon's little boat tosses on a sea-wind night.
The south-west wind takes the high Italian coasts. He gathers the ilex
woods together and throngs them close, as a sheep-dog gathers the sheep.
They crowd for shelter, and a great wall, leaning inland also, with its
strong base to the sea, receives them. It is blank and sunny, and the
trees within are sunny and dark, serried, and their tops swept and
flattened by months of sea-storms.
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