“How many men,” he wondered, “since the black cormorants and foolish guillemots screamed around these escarpments, have stood still, as I am doing now, and wrestled with the secret of this promontory?” Did any of the serfs of Arthur, or of Merlin the magician, lean here upon their spades and let their souls sink down and down, into motions of primal matter older than any gods? Did any of the Roman legionaries, stark and stoical, making of this hill “a sacred place” for some strange new cult of Mithras, forget both Mithras and Apollo under this terrestrial magnetism⁠—this power that already was spreading abroad its influence long before Saturn was born of Uranus?

“Poll’s Camp is heathen through and through,” he thought; “and even if the old gods never existed, there’s a power here that in some queer way⁠ ⁠… perhaps just chemically⁠ ⁠… is at once bewildering and hostile to me. But the valley⁠ ⁠… this unobtrusive, chastened valley⁠ ⁠… like some immense sad-coloured flower floating upon hidden water⁠ ⁠… oh, it is the thing I love best of all!”