its borders, where the duck love to come.  I looked long at that untroubled world of heather, and then I looked at the white cottages on the hill, and saw the grey smoke curling from their chimneys and knew that they burned turf there, and longed for the smell of burning turf again.  And far away there arose and came nearer the weird cry of wild and happy voices, and a flock of geese appeared that was coming from the northward.  Then their cries blended into one great voice of exultation, the voice of freedom, the voice of Ireland, the voice of the Waste; and the voice said ’Goodbye to you.  Goodbye!’ and passed away into the distance; and as it passed, the tame geese on the farms cried out to their brothers up above them that they were free.  Then the hills went away, and the bog and the sky went with them, and I was alone again, as lost souls are alone.

Then there grew up beside me the red brick buildings of my first school and the chapel that adjoined it.  The fields a little way off were full of boys in white flannels playing cricket.  On the asphalt playing ground, just by the schoolroom windows, stood Agamemnon, Achilles, and Odysseus, with their Argives armed behind them; but Hector stepped down out of a ground-floor window, and in the schoolroom were all Priam’s sons and the Achaeans and fair Helen; and a little farther away the Ten Thousand drifted across the playground, going up into the heart of Persia to place Cyrus on his brother’s throne.  And the boys that I knew called to me from the fields, and said ‘Goodbye,’ and they and the fields went away; and the Ten Thousand said ‘Goodbye,’ each file as they passed me marching swiftly, and they too disappeared.  And Hector and Agamemnon said ‘Goodbye,’ and the host of the Argives and of the Achaeans; and they all went away and the old school with them, and I was alone again.

The next scene that filled the emptiness was rather dim:  I was being led by my nurse along a little footpath over a common in Surrey.  She was quite young.  Close by a band of gypsies had lit their fire, near them their romantic caravan stood unhorsed, and the horse cropped grass beside it.  It was evening, and the gypsies muttered round their fire in a tongue unknown and strange.  Then they all said in English, ‘Goodbye’.  And the evening and the common and the campfire went away.  And instead of this a white highway with darkness and stars below it that led into darkness and stars, but at the near end of the road were common fields and gardens, and there I stood close to a large number of people, men and women.  And I saw a man walking alone down the road away from me towards the darkness and the stars, and all the people called him by his name, and the man would not hear them, but walked on down the road, and the people went on calling him by his name.  But I became irritated with the man because he would not stop or turn round when so many people called him by his name, and it was a very strange name.  And I became weary of hearing the strange name so very often repeated, so that I made a great effort to call him, that he might listen and that the people might stop repeating this strange name.  And with the effort I opened my eyes wide, and the name that the people called was my own name, and I lay on the river’s bank with men and women bending over me, and my hair was wet.