should walk there i found some excuse why go the reality would destroy the dream what reality could equal my memory of the where the of the drain where we for of the long strand with the lake far away in summer of my dead life time how well i remember that yellow sand hard and level in some places as the floor of a ball room the water there is so shallow that our used to allow us to wander at will to run on ahead in pursuit of a the bird used to fly round with little cries and we often used to think it was wounded perhaps it pretended to be wounded in order to lead us away from its nest we did not think it possible to see the lake in any new aspect yet there it lay as we had never seen it before so still so soft so grey like a white muslin flowing out winding past island and the silence was so intense that one thought of the of long ago of sleeping woods and haunted castles there were the castles on islands lying in water faint as dreams now and then a bird uttered a piercing little chatter from the branches of the tall and ducks in the but their talk was only a soft murmur hardly louder than the rustle of the now in full leaf everything was that day the shadows of reed and island seemed for ever as in a magic mirror � a mirror that somebody had breathed upon and listening to the little of the water about the one seemed to hear eternity murmuring its sad monotony the lake curves inland forming a pleasant bay among the woods there is a sandy spit where some pines have found and they live on somehow despite the harsh of the wind in winter along the shore dead lie in rows three feet deep among the rushes had they been placed there by hand they could not have been placed with more regularity and there is an old cart track with growing out of a tumbled wall the is planted � beautiful and at one end and at the other some with tall swaying branches shedding faint shadows these were the wonder of my childhood a path leads through the wood and under the rugged pine somebody has placed a seat a roughly ni stone supported by two upright stones for some reason unknown to me this seat always even when i was a child a pilgrim s seat i suppose the suggestion came from the knowledge that my grandmother used to go every day to the tomb at the end of the wood where her husband and sons lay and whither she was taken herself long ago when i was in and twenty years after my father was taken there what a ceaseless of the same things a will appear again in a few days perhaps the same the horses covered up with black made to look ridiculous with weed the coachman no better than a the ominous superior mute directing the others with a there will be a procession of relatives and friends all wearing and black gloves and most of them thinking how soon they can get back to their business that which we call a funeral fearing premature burial a very common fear my mother had asked that her burial should be postponed a natural change in the elements of her body should leave no doubt that life no longer op my dead life there and the interval between her death and her burial i spent along the lake s shore the same weather continued day after day and it is almost impossible to find words to express the beauty of the grey reflection of the islands and the and the faint shores floating away disappearing in the sun haze and the silence about the shores a kind of enchanted silence interrupted as i have said only by the low of the water about the now and then the song of a bird would break out and all was silence again � a silence that seems to come out of the very heart of things i said and i stopped to listen like one at the world s end i walked on wondering through the rushes and grass and bushes which grew along the shore along the edge of the wood coming from the town i could not but admire the of the country hardly ever did i hear the sound of a human voice or a footstep only did i meet some wood poor women carrying bundles of bent under their loads and thinking that perchance i knew them � they were evidently from the village if so i must have known them when i was a boy � i was suddenly seized by an unaccountable dread or a shyness occasioned no doubt by the sense of the immense difference that time had effected in us they were the same but i was different the books i had pondered and the pictures i had seen had me from them simple souls that they were and the consciousness of the injustice of the human lot made it a pain to me to look into their so i was glad to be able to pass behind some bushes and to escape into the wood without their perceiving me and upon pleasant pleasanter even than those that lingered in my memory i lay down for though the days were the first days of may the grass was long and warm and ready for the the branches of the tall swung faintly in a delicious breeze and the words of the old irish poet came into my mind the wood was like a harp in the hands of a to see the boughs to listen to them seemed a sufficient delight and i began to admire the low sky 